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Title: A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

Author: Thomas M. Lindsay

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF
THE REFORMATION (VOL. 2 OF 2) ***

The International Theological Library

EDITED BY

CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.,
Professor of Theological Encyclopædia and Symbolics, Union Theological
Seminary, New York;

AND

The Late STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D.,
Principal, and Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis,
United Free Church College, Aberdeen.

A HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.

By THOMAS M. LINDSAY,
D.D., LL.D.

IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. II.

International Theological Library

A HISTORY
OF

THE REFORMATION

BY

THOMAS M. LINDSAY, D.D., LL.D.
PRINCIPAL, THE UNITED FREE CHURCH

COLLEGE, GLASGOW

IN TWO VOLUMES

Volume II

THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND, FRANCE
THE NETHERLANDS, SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND
THE ANABAPTIST AND SOCINIAN MOVEMENTS
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

WITH MAP OF THE REFORMATION AND
COUNTER-REFORMATION (1520-1580).

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1907

PREFACE.
In this volume I have endeavoured to fulfil the promise made in the former
one to describe the Reformed Churches, the Anabaptist and Socinian
movements and the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century.
It has been based on a careful study of contemporary sources of
information, and no important fact has been recorded for which there is not
contemporary evidence. Full use has been made of work done by
predecessors in the same field. The sources and the later books consulted
have been named at the beginning of each chapter; but special reference is
due to the writings of Professor Pollard on the reigns of Henry VIII. and
Edward VI., and to those of MM. Lemonnier and Mariéjol for the history of
Protestantism in France. The sources consulted are, for the most part,
printed in Calendars of State Papers issued by the various Governments of
Europe, or in the correspondence of prominent men and women of the
sixteenth century, edited and published for Historical and Archæological
Societies; but the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, relating to the reigns
of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, is little more than a brief account of
the contents of the documents, and has to be supplemented by reference to
the original documents in the Record Office.
The field covered in this volume is so extensive that the accounts of the rise
and progress of the Reformation in the various countries included had to be
very much condensed. I have purposely given a larger space to the
beginnings of each movement, believing them to be less known and more
deserving of study. One omission must be noted. Nothing has been said
directly about the Reformed Churches in Bohemia, Hungary, and the
neighbouring lands. It would have been easy to devote a few pages to the
subject: but such a brief description would have been misleading. The rise,
continuance, and decline of these Churches are so inseparably connected
with the peculiar social and political conditions of the countries, that no
adequate or informing account of them could be given without largely
exceeding the limits of space at my disposal.

After the volume had been fully printed, and addition or alteration was
impossible, two important documents bearing on subjects discussed came
into my hands too late for references in the text.
I have found that the Library of the Technical College in Glasgow contains
a copy, probably unique, of the famous Hymn-book of the Brethren
published at Ulm in 1538. It is entitled: Ein hubsch neu Gesangbuch
darinnen begrieffen die Kirchenordnung und Geseng die zür Lants Kron
und Fulneck in Behem, von der Christlichen Bruderschafft den Piccarden,
die bishero für Unchristen und Ketzer gehalten, gebraucht und teglich Gutt
zum Ehren gesungen werden. Gedruckt zu Ulm bey Hans Varnier. An.
MDXXXVIII. I know of a copy of much later date in Nürnberg; but of no
perfect copy of this early impression. It is sufficient to say that the book
confirms what I have said of the character of the religion of the Brethren.
Then in December 1906, Señor Henriques published at Lisbon the authentic
records of the trial of George Buchanan and two fellow professors in the
Coimbra College before the Inquisition. These records show that the
prosecution had not been instigated by the Jesuits, as was generally
conjectured, but was due to the malice of a former Principal of the College.
The statement made on p. 556 has therefore to be corrected.
The kindness of the publishers has provided an historical map, which I trust
will be found useful. It gives, I think for the first time, a representation to
the eye of the wide extent of the Anabaptist movement. The red bars denote
districts where contemporary documents attest the existence of Anabaptist
communities. At least four maps, representing successive periods, would be
needed to show with exactness the shifting boundaries of the various
confessions: one map can only give the general results.
My thanks are again due to my colleague, Dr. Denney, and to another
friend, for the care they have taken in revising the proof sheets, and for
many valuable suggestions.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
January, 1907.

CONTENTS

BOOK III.

THE REFORMED CHURCHES.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction.
PAGE
§ 1. The limitations of the Peace of Augsburg 1

§ 2. The Reformation outside Germany 5

§ 3. The Reformed type of Doctrine 6

§ 4. The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government 7

§ 5. The influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches 9

§ 6. What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther 13

§ 7. National Characteristics as they affected the Reformation 18

CHAPTER II.

The Reformation in Switzerland under Zwingli.

§ 1. The political condition of Switzerland 21

§ 2. Zwingli’s youth and education 24

§ 3. Zwingli at Glarus and at Einsiedeln 27

§ 4. Zwingli in Zurich 29

§ 5. The Public Disputations 33

§ 6. The Reformation outside Zurich 38

In Basel—Oecolampadius and William Farel 38

In Bern—The Ten Theses 40

In Appenzell and other Cantons 46

The Christian Civic League (Protestant). The Christian Union
48
(Romanist)

§ 7. The Sacramental Controversy 52

CHAPTER III.

The Reformation in Geneva under Calvin.

§ 1. Geneva 61

§ 2. The Reformation in Western Switzerland 66

Farel and his band of evangelists 71

§ 3. Farel in Geneva 74

Bern, Freiburg, and Geneva 77

The Public Disputation and the Thèses Évangéliques 85

§ 4. Calvin: Youth and education 92

Christianæ Religionis Institutio 99

§ 5. Calvin with Farel in Geneva 102

Articuli de regimine ecclesiæ—Discipline in the Church 105

The theologians of Eastern Switzerland and
110
excommunication

Calvin and Farel banished from Geneva 120

Calvin recalled to Geneva—Les ordonnances ecclésiastiques
128
de l’Église de Genève

What Calvin did for Geneva 131

CHAPTER IV.

The Reformation in France.

§ 1. Marguerite d’Angoulême and the “group of Meaux” 136

§ 2. Attempts to repress the movement for Reform 144

§ 3. Change in the character of the movement for Reform 151

§ 4. Calvin and his influence in France 153

§ 5. Persecution under Henry II. 161

§ 6. The organisation of the French Protestant Church 164

§ 7. Reaction against persecution 169

§ 8. The higher aristocracy won for the Reformation in France 171

§ 9. France ruled by the Guises 173

§ 10. Catherine de’ Medici becomes Regent 178

§ 11. The Conference at Poissy 186

§ 12. The massacre at Vassy 189

§ 13. The beginning of the Wars of Religion 191

§ 14. The massacre of St. Bartholomew 198

§ 15. The Huguenot resistance after the massacre 200

§ 16. The beginnings of the League 205

§ 17. The League becomes disloyal 207

§ 18. The day of Barricades 211

§ 19. The King takes refuge with the Huguenots 214

§ 20. The Declaration of Henry IV. 217

§ 21. Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic 219

§ 22. The Edict of Nantes 221

CHAPTER V.

The Reformation in the Netherlands.

§ 1. The political situation 224

§ 2. The beginnings of the Reformation 228

§ 3. The Anabaptists in the Netherlands 234

§ 4. Philip of Spain and the Netherlands 240

§ 5. William of Orange 254

CHAPTER VI.

The Reformation in Scotland.

Preparation for the Reformation 274

Lollardy in Scotland 276

Lutheran writings in Scotland 279

The Beginnings of the Reformation 282

George Wishart 284

John Knox, early work in Scotland 285

Knox in England, in Switzerland, and at Frankfurt 286

The “Band subscrived by the Lords.” “The Congregation” 289

Knox’s final return to Scotland 293

Knox and Cecil. The English alliance 294

The Scots Confession of Faith 302

The First Book of Discipline, or the Policie and Discipline of the
304
Church. The Book of Common Order

Return of Queen Mary to Scotland 309

BOOK IV.

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

The Church of Henry viii.

Influences in England making for the Reformation. Lollardy, Hatred of
315
the Clergy, Humanism, Luther

The marriage of Henry and Catharine of Aragon, and the doubts
322
entertained of its validity

The Revolt of England from Roman jurisdiction 325

The Ten Articles and the Injunctions 333

The Bishops’ Book, and its teaching 336

The English Bible 337

Projected alliance with the German Protestants 340

The visitation and dissolution of monasteries 343

The Six Articles and the King’s Book 347

CHAPTER II.

The Reformation under Edward vi.

The Injunctions and the Articles of Inquiry 351

The condition of the English Clergy 353

The First Prayer-Book of King Edward VI. 356

Continental Reformers in England 358

The Second Prayer-Book of King Edward VI. 361

Beginnings of the controversy about Vestments 364

CHAPTER III.

The Reaction under Mary.

The beginnings of Queen Mary’s reign 368

The restoration of England to the papal obedience 371

The Injunctions and the Visitation 374

The revival of heresy laws and the persecutions 375

The martyrdom of Cranmer 378

CHAPTER IV.

The Settlement under Elizabeth.

Elizabeth resolves to be a Protestant. The political situation 385

The Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity 390

The Elizabethan Prayer-Book 396

The Act of Uniformity and the Rubric about Ornaments 402

The dealings with recalcitrant clergymen 408

The Thirty-Nine Articles 411

How Discipline was regulated 417

The character of the Elizabethan settlement 418

BOOK V.

ANABAPTISM AND SOCINIANISM.

CHAPTER I.

Revival of Mediæval Anti-Ecclesiastical Movements.

Mediæval Nonconformists 421

The Anti-Trinitarians 424

CHAPTER II.

Anabaptism.

The mediæval roots of Anabaptism 430

Anabaptism organisation 434

Varieties of teaching among the Anabaptists 437

Anabaptists object to a State Church 442

The Anabaptists in Switzerland. Their persecution 445

Anabaptist hymnology 449

The Kingdom of God in Münster 451

Bernhard Rothmann and his work in Münster 452

Dutch Anabaptists in Münster 459

Polygamy in Münster 463

CHAPTER III.

Socinianism.

Lelio and Fausto Sozzini 470

Socinianism took its rise from a criticism of Doctrines 473

Socinianism and the Scoto-Pelagian theology 474

The doctrines of God, the Work of Christ and the Church 477

BOOK VI.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION.

CHAPTER I.

The Necessity of a Reformation of some sort universally
admitted.

Variety of complaints against the mediæval Church 484

Formation of local churches 487

CHAPTER II.

The Spanish Conception of a Reformation.

§ 1. The religious condition of Spain 488

§ 2. The reformation under Ximenes 490

§ 3. The Spaniards and Luther 493

§ 4. Pope Adrian VI. and the Spanish Reformation 496

CHAPTER III.

Italian liberal Roman Catholics and their Conception of a
Reformation.

§ 1. The religious condition of Italy 501

§ 2. Italian Roman Catholic Reformers 504

§ 3. Cardinals Contarini and Caraffa 513

§ 4. The Conference at Regensburg 519

CHAPTER IV.

Ignatius Loyola and the Company of Jesus.

§ 1. At Manresa 525

§ 2. Ignatius at Paris. The ecclesiastical situation at Paris 533

§ 3. The Spiritual Exercises 538

§ 4. Ignatius in Italy 545

§ 5. The Society of Jesus 549

CHAPTER V.

The Council of Trent.

§ 1. The assembling of the Council 564

§ 2. Procedure at the Council 568

§ 3. Restatement of Doctrines 570

The Doctrine of the Rule of Faith 572

Original Sin and Justification 575

§ 4. The second meeting of the Council 581

§ 5. The third meeting of the Council 587

The position of the Pope strengthened 593

CHAPTER VI.

The Inquisition and the Index.

§ 1. The Inquisition in Spain 597

§ 2. The Inquisition in Italy 600

§ 3. The Index of prohibited books 602

§ 4. The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation 606

BOOK III.

THE REFORMED CHURCHES.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. The Limitations of the Peace of Augsburg.

The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) secured the legal recognition of
the Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, and consequently within
European polity. Henceforward States, which declared through their
responsible rulers that they meant to live after the religion described in the
Augsburg Confession, were admitted to the comity of nations, and the Pope
was legally and practically debarred from excommunicating them, from
placing them under interdict, and from inviting obedient neighbouring
potentates to conquer and dispossess their sovereigns. The Bishop of Rome
could no longer, according to the recognised custom of the Holy Roman
Empire, launch a Bull against a Lutheran prince and expect to have its
execution enforced as in earlier days. The Popes were naturally slow to see
this, and had to be reminded of the altered state of matters more than once.
[1]

Of course, the exalted Romanist powers, civil and ecclesiastical, never
meant this settlement to be lasting. They intrigued secretly among
themselves, and fought openly, against it. The final determined effort to
overthrow it was that hideous nightmare which goes by the name of the
Thirty Years’ War, mainly caused by the determination of the Jesuits that by
the help of God and the devil, for that, as Carlyle has remarked, was the
peculiarity of the plan, all Germany must be brought back to the obedience
of Holy Stepmother Church, and to submission to the Supreme Headship of
the Holy Roman Empire—the Supreme Headship becoming more and more
shadowy as the years passed. The settlement lasted, however, and remains
in general outline until the present.
But the Religious Peace of Augsburg did not end the revolt against Rome
which was simmering in every land in Western Europe. It made no
provision for the multitude of believers in the Augsburg Confession, whose

princes, for conscience’ sake or for worldly policy, remained steadfast to
Rome, save that they were to be permitted to emigrate to territories where
the rulers were of the same faith as theirs. These Lutherans were to be
found in every part of Germany, and were very abundant in the Duchy of
Austria. The statement of Faber, the Bishop of Vienna, that the only good
Catholics in that city were himself and the Archduke Ferdinand, was, of
course, rhetorical; but it is a proof of the numbers of the followers of
Luther.[2]
It chained irrevocably to the Romanist creed, by the clause called the
ecclesiastical reservation, not merely the people, but the rulers in the
numerous ecclesiastical principalities scattered all over Germany. This
provision secured that if an ecclesiastical prince adopted the Lutheran faith,
he was to be deprived of his principality. It is probable that this provision
did more than anything else to secure for the Romanists the position they
now have in Germany. It was partly due to the alarms excited by the fact
that Albert of Brandenburg, Master of the Teutonic Knights, had secularised
his land of East Prussia and had become a Lutheran, and by the narrow
escape of the province of Köln from following in the same path, under its
reforming archbishop, Hermann von Wied.
The Peace of Augsburg made no provision for any Protestants other than
those who accepted the Augsburg Confession; and thousands in the
Palatinate and all throughout South Germany preferred another type of
Protestant faith. It is probable that, had Luther lived for ten or fifteen years
longer, the great division between the Reformed or Calvinist and the
Evangelical or Lutheran Churches would have been bridged over; but after
his death his successors, intent to maintain, as they expressed it, the deposit
of truth which Luther had left, actually ostracised Melanchthon for his
endeavour to heal the breach. The consequence was that the Lutheran
Church within Germany after 1555 lost large districts to the Reformed
Church.
Under Elector Frederick III., surnamed the Pious, the territorial Church of
the Palatinate separated from the circle of Lutheran Churches, and in 1563
the Heidelberg Catechism was published. This celebrated doctrinal formula
at once became, and has remained, the distinctive creed of the various
branches of the Reformed Church within Germany; and its influence
extended even farther.

Bremen followed the example of the Palatinate in 1568. Its divines
published a doctrinal Declaration in 1572, and a more lengthy Consensus
Bremenensis in 1595. Anhalt, under its ruler John George (1587-1603), did
away with the consistorial system of Church government, and abandoned
the use of Luther’s Catechism. Hesse-Cassel joined the circle of German
Reformed Churches in 1605. These examples were followed in many
smaller principalities, most of which, imitating all the Reformed Churches,
published separate and distinctive confessions of faith, which were
nevertheless supposed to contain the sum and substance of the common
Reformed creed.[3]
These German principalities, rulers and inhabitants, placed themselves
deliberately outside the protection of the Religious Peace of Augsburg. The
fundamental principles of their faith were not very different from the
Lutheran, but they were important enough to make them forego the
protection which the treaty afforded. Setting aside minor differences and
sentiments, perhaps more powerful than doctrines, their separation from
neighbouring Protestants was based on their objection to the doctrine of
Ubiquity, essential to the Lutheran theory of the Sacrament of the Supper,
and to the consistorial system of ecclesiastical government. They repudiated
the two portions of the Lutheran system which were derived professedly
from the mediæval Church, and insisted on basing their exposition of
doctrine and their scheme of ecclesiastical government more directly on the
Word of God. They had come in contact with another reformation
movement, had recognised its sturdier principles, and had become so
enamoured of them that they felt compelled to leave the Lutheran Church
for the Reformed.
Still confining ourselves to Germany, it is to be noticed that the Augsburg
Confession ostentatiously and over and over again separated those who
accepted it from protesters against the mediæval Church, who were called
Anabaptists. It repudiated views supposed to be held by them on Baptism,
the Holy Scripture, the possibility of a life of sinless perfection, and the
relation of Christian men to the magistracy. In some of the truces arranged
between the Emperor and the evangelical princes,—truces which
anticipated the religious Peace of Augsburg,—attempts were made to
induce Lutherans and Romanists to unite in suppressing those sectaries. It is
needless to say that they were not included in the settlement in 1555. Yet

they had spread all over Germany, endured with constancy bloody
persecutions, and from them have come the large and influential Baptist
Churches in Europe and America. From beginning to end they were outside
the Lutheran Reformation.

§ 2. The Reformation outside Germany.

When we go beyond Germany and survey the other countries of Western
Europe, it is abundantly evident that the story of the Lutheran movement
from its beginning down to its successful issue in the Religious Peace of
Augsburg is only a small part of the history of the Reformation. France,
Great Britain, the Netherlands, Bohemia, Hungary, even Italy, Spain, and
Poland, throbbed with the religious revival of the sixteenth century, and its
manifestations in these lands differed in many respects from that which
belonged to Germany. All shared with Germany the common experiences,
intellectual and religious, political and economic, of that period of transition
which is called the Renaissance in the wider sense of the word—the
transition from mediæval to modern life.[4] They had all come to the parting
of the ways. They had all emerged from Mediævalism, and all saw the
wider outlook which was the heritage of the time. All felt the same longing
to shake themselves clear of the incubus of clericalism which weighed
heavily on their national life, whether religious or political. Each land went
forward, marching by its own path marked out for it by its past history,
intellectual, religious, and civil. The movements in these various countries
towards a freer and more real religious life cannot be described in the same
general terms; but if Italy and Spain be excepted, their attempts at a national
reformation had one thing in common which definitely separated them from
the Lutheran movement.

§ 3. The Reformed type of Doctrine.

If the type of doctrine professed by the Protestants in those countries be
considered (confessedly a partial, one-sided, and imperfect standard), it
may be said that they all refused to accept some of the distinctive Lutheran
dogmatic conclusions, and that they all departed more widely from some of
the conceptions of the Mediæval Church. Their national confessions in their
final forms borrowed more from Zurich and Geneva than from Wittenberg,

and they all belong to the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran or
Evangelical circle of creeds.[5] It was perhaps natural that differences in the
ritual and theory of the Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of Christian
Public Worship, should be to the general eye the visible cleavage between
rival forms of Christianity. In the earlier stages of the Reformation
movement, the great popular distinction between the Romanists and
Protestants was that the one refused and the other admitted the laity to
partake of the Cup of Communion; and later, within an orthodox
Protestantism, the thought of ubiquity was the dividing line. The Lutherans
asserted and the Reformed denied or ignored the doctrine; and those
confessions took the Reformed view.

§ 4. The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government.

This similarity of published creed was the one positive bond which united
all those Churches; but it may also be said that all of them, with the
doubtful exception of the Church of England,[6] would have nothing to do
with the consistorial system of the Lutheran Churches, and that most of
them accepted in theory at least Calvin’s conception of ecclesiastical
government. They strove to get away from the mediæval ideas of
ecclesiastical rule, and to return to the principles which they believed to be
laid down for them in the New Testament, illustrated by the conduct of the
Church of the early centuries. The Church, according to Calvin, was a
theocratic democracy, and the ultimate source of authority lay in the
membership of the Christian community, inspired by the Presence of Christ
promised to all His people. But in the sixteenth century this conception was
confronted and largely qualified in practice, by the dread that it might lead
to a return to the clerical tutelage of the mediæval Church from which they
had just escaped. Presbyter might become priest writ large; and the leaders
of the Reformation in many lands could see, as Zwingli did in Zurich and
Cranmer in England, that the civil authorities might well represent the
Christian democracy. Even Calvin in Geneva had to content himself with
ecclesiastical ordinances which left the Church completely under the
control of les très honnorès seigneurs syndicques et conseil de Genève; and
the Scottish Church in 1572 had to recognise that the King was the
“Supreme Governor of this realm as well in things temporal as in the
conservation and purgation of religion.” The nations and principalities in

Western Europe which had adopted and supported the Reformation believed
that manifold abuses had arisen in the past, directly and indirectly, through
the exemption of the Church and its possessions from secular control, and
they were determined not to permit the possibility of a return to such a state
of things. The scholarship of the Renaissance had discovered the true text of
the old Roman Civil Code, and one of the features of that time of transition
—perhaps its most important and far-reaching feature, for law enters into
every relation of human life—was the substitution of civil law based on the
Codes of Justinian and Theodosius, for canon law based on the Decretum of
Gratian. These old Roman codes taught the lawyers and statesmen of the
sixteenth century to look upon the Church as a department of the State; and
the thought that the Christian community had an independent life of its
own, and that its guidance and discipline ought to be in the hands of office-
bearers chosen by its membership, was everywhere confronted, modified,
largely overthrown by the imperious claim of the civilian lawyers.
Ecclesiastical leaders within the Reformed Churches might strive as they
liked to draw the line between the possessions of the Church, which they
willingly placed under the control of civil law, and its discipline in matters
of faith and morals, which they declared to be the inalienable possession of
the Church; but, as a rule, the State refused to perceive the distinction, and
insisted in maintaining full control over the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Hence it came about that in every land where the secular authorities were
favourable to the Reformation, the Church became more or less subject to
the State; and this resulted in a large variety of ecclesiastical organisations
in communities all belonging to the Reformed Church. While it may be said
with perfect truth that the churchly ideal in the minds of the leaders in most
of the Reformed Churches was to restore the theocratic democracy of the
early centuries, and that this was a strong point of contrast between them
and Luther, who insisted that the jus episcopale belonged to the civil
magistrate, in practice the secular authorities in Switzerland, the
Netherlands, the Palatinate, etc., kept almost as tight a hold on the
Reformed national Churches as did the Lutheran princes and municipalities.
In one land only, France, the ecclesiastical ideal of Calvin had full liberty to
embody itself in a constitution, and that only because the French Reformed
Church struggled into existence under the civil rule of a Romanist State,
and, like the Christian Church of the early centuries, maintained itself in
spite of the opposition of the secular authorities which persecuted it.

§ 5. The Influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches.

The portion of the Reformation which lay outside the Peace of Augsburg
had another characteristic which distinguished it from the Lutheran
Reformation included within the treaty—it owed much more to Humanism.
Erasmus and what he represented had a greater share in its birth and early
progress, and his influence appeared amidst the most dissimilar
surroundings. Henry VIII. and Zwingli seem to stand at opposite poles; yet
the English autocrat and the Swiss democrat were alike in this, that they
owed much to Erasmus, and that the reformations which they respectively
led were largely prompted by the impulse of Humanism. One has only to
compare the Bishops’ Book and the King’s Book of the Henrican period in
England with the many statements Erasmus has made about the kind of
reformation he desired to see, to recognise that they were meant to serve for
a reformation in life and morals which would leave untouched the
fundamental doctrinal system of the mediæval Church and its organisation
in accordance with the principles laid down by the great Humanist. The
Bible, the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, with the doctrinal
decisions of the first four Œcumenical Councils, were recognised as the
standards of orthodoxy in the Ten Articles; and the Scholastic Theology, so
derided by Erasmus, was contemptuously ignored. The accompanying
Injunctions set little store by pilgrimages, relics, and indulgences, and the
other superstitions of the popular religious life which the great Humanist
had treated sarcastically. The two books alluded to above are full of
instructions for leading a wholesome life. The whole programme of
reformation is laid down on lines borrowed from Erasmus.
Zwingli was under the influence of Humanism from his boyhood. His
young intellect was fed on the masterpieces of classical antiquity—Cicero,
Homer, and Pindar. His favourite teacher was Thomas Wyttenbach, who
was half a Reformer and half a pure follower of Erasmus. No man
influenced him more than the learned Dutchman. It was his guidance and
not the example of Luther which made him study the Scriptures and the
theologians of the early Church, such as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom.
The influence and example of Erasmus can be seen even in his attempts to
create a rational theory of the Holy Supper. His reformation, in its
beginning more especially, was much more an intellectual than a religious

movement. It aimed at a clearer understanding of the Holy Scriptures, at the
purgation of the popular religious life from idolatry and superstition, and at
a clearly reasoned out scheme of intellectual belief. The deeper religious
impulse which drove Luther, step by step, in his path of revolt from the
mediæval Church was lacking in Zwingli. He owed little to Wittenberg,
much to Rotterdam. It was this connection with Erasmus that created the
sympathy between Zwingli and such early Dutch Reformers as Christopher
Hoen, and made the Swiss Reformer a power in the earlier stages of the
Reformation in the Netherlands.
The beginnings of the Reformation movement in France, Italy, and Spain
were even more closely allied to Humanism.
If the preparation for reformation to be found in the work and teaching of
mediæval evangelical nonconformists like the Picards be set aside, the
beginnings of the Reformation in France must be traced to the small group
of Christian Humanists who surrounded Marguerite d’Angoulême and
Briçonnet the Bishop of Meaux. Marguerite herself and Jacques Lefèvre
d’Étaples, the real leader of the group of scholars and preachers, found
solace for soul troubles in the Christian Platonism to which so many of the
Humanists north and south of the Alps had given themselves. The aim of
the little circle of enthusiasts was a reformation of the Church and of
society on the lines laid down by Erasmus. They looked to reform without
“tumult,” to a reformation of the Church by the Church and within the
Church, brought about by a study of the Scriptures, and especially of the
Epistles of St. Paul, by individual Christians weaning themselves from the
world while they remained in society, and by slowly leavening the people
with the enlightenment which the New Learning was sure to bring. They
cared little for theology, much for intimacy with Christ; little for external
changes in institutions, much for personal piety. Their efforts had little
visible effect, and their via media between the stubborn defenders of
Scholasticism on the one hand and more thorough Reformers on the other,
was found to be an impossible path to persevere in; but it must not be
forgotten that they did much to prepare France for the Reformation
movement which they really inaugurated; nor that William Farel, the
precursor of Calvin himself in Geneva, belonged to the “group of Meaux.”
If Humanism influenced the “group of Meaux,” who were the advance
guard of the French Reformation, it manifested itself no less powerfully in

the training of Calvin, who in 1536 unconsciously became the leader of the
movement. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic students of the
band of “royal lecturers” appointed by Francis I. to give France the benefits
of the New Learning. He had intimate personal relations with Budé and
Cop, who were allied to the “group of Meaux,” and were leaders among the
Humanists in the University. His earliest book, a Commentary on the De
Clementia of Seneca, shows how wide and minute was his knowledge of
the Greek and Latin classical authors. Like Erasmus, he does not seem to
have been much influenced by the mystical combination of Platonism and
Christianity which entranced the Christian Humanists of Italy and filled the
minds of the “group of Meaux”; and like him he broke through the narrow
circle of elegant trifling within which most of the Italian scholars were
confined, and used the New Learning for modern purposes. Humanism
taught him to think imperially in the best fashion of ancient Rome, to see
that great moral ideas ought to rule in the government of men. It filled him
with a generous indignation at the evils which flowed from an abuse of
absolute and arbitrary power. The young scholar (he was only three-and-
twenty) attacked the governmental abuses of the times with a boldness
which revived the best traditions of Roman statesmanship. He denounced
venal judges who made “justice a public merchandise.” He declared that
princes who slew their people or subjected them to wholesale persecution
were not legitimate rulers, but brigands, and that brigands were the enemies
of the whole human race. At a time when persecution was prevalent
everywhere, the Commentary of the young Humanist pleaded for tolerance
in language as lofty as Milton employed in his Areopagitica. He was not
blind to the defects of the stoical morality displayed in the book he
commented upon. He contrasted the stoical indifference with Christian
sympathy, and stoical individualism with the thought of Christian society;
but he seized upon and made his own the loftier moral ideas in Stoicism,
and applied them to public life. Luther was great, none greater, in holding
up the liberty of the Christian man; but there he halted, or advanced beyond
it with very faltering step. Humanism taught Calvin the claims and the
duties of the Christian society; he proclaimed them aloud, and his thoughts
spread throughout that portion of the Reformation which followed his
leadership and accepted his principles. The Holy Scriptures, St. Augustine,
and the imperial ethics of the old Roman Stoicism coming through
Humanism, were a trinity of influence on all the Reformed Churches.

The Reformation in Spain and Italy was only a brief episode; but in its
short-lived existence in these lands, Humanism was one of the greatest
forces supporting it and giving it strength. In both countries the young life
was quenched in the blood of martyrs. So quickly did it pass, that it seems
surprising to learn that Erasmus confidently expected that Spain would be
the land to accomplish the Reformation without “tumult” which he so long
looked forward to and expected; that the Scriptures were read throughout
the Spanish peninsula, and that women vied with men in knowledge of their
contents, during the earlier part of the sixteenth century.

§ 6. What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther.

There was, then, a Reformation movement which in its earliest beginnings
and in its final outcome was quite distinct from that under the leadership of
Luther; but it would be erroneous to say that it was altogether outside
Luther’s influence, and that it owed little or nothing to the great German
Reformer. It is vain to speculate on what might have been, or to ask whether
the undoubted movements making for reformation in lands outside
Germany would have come to fruition had not Luther’s trumpet-call
sounded over Europe. It is enough to state what did actually occur. If it
cannot be said that the beginnings of the Reformation in every land came
from Luther, it can scarcely be denied that he gave to his contemporaries
the inspiration of courage and of assured conviction. He delivered men
from the fear of priestcraft; he taught men, in a way that no other did, that
redemption was not a secret science practised by the priests within an
institution called the Church; that all believers had the privilege of direct
access to the very presence of God; and that the very thought of a
priesthood who alone could mediate between God and man was both
superfluous and irreconcilable with the truest instincts of the Christian
religion. His teaching had a sounding board of dramatic environment which
compelled men to listen, to attend, to be impressed, to understand, and to
follow.
He had been and was a deeply pious man, with the piety of the type most
esteemed by his contemporaries, and therefore easily understood and
sympathised with by the common man. His piety had driven him into the
convent, as then seemed both natural and necessary. Inside the monastery

he had lived the life of a “young saint”—so his fellow monks believed,
when, in the fashion of the day and of their class, they boasted that they had
among them one destined to revive again the best type of mediæval
saintship. No coarse, vulgar sins of the flesh, common enough at the time
and easily condoned, smirched his young life. When he attained to peace in
believing, he had no doubt of his vocation; no sudden wrench tore him
away from the approved religious life of his time; no intellectual doubt
separated him from the beliefs of his Church. His very imperviousness to
the intellectual liberalising tendencies of Humanism made him all the more
fit to be a trusted religious leader. He went forward step by step with such a
slow, sure foot-tread that the common man could see and follow. When he
did come forward as a Reformer he did not run amuck at things in general.
He felt compelled to attack the one portion of the popular religious life of
the times which all men who gave the slightest thought to religion felt to be
a gross abuse. The way he dealt with it revealed that he was the great
religious genius of his age—an age which was imperatively if confusedly
calling for reform within the sphere of religion.
If to be original means simply to be the first to see and make known a
single truth or a fresh aspect of a truth, it is possible to contest the claim of
Luther to be an original thinker. It would not be difficult to point out
anticipations of almost every separate truth which he taught to his
generation. To take two only—Wessel had denounced indulgences in
language so similar to Luther’s, that, when the Reformer read it long after
the publication of the Theses, he could say that people might well imagine
that he had simply borrowed from the old Dutch theologian; and Lefèvre
d’Étaples had taught the doctrine of justification by faith before it had
flashed on Luther’s soul with all the force of a revelation. But if originality
be the gift to seize, to combine into one organic whole, separate isolated
truths, to see their bearing upon the practical religious life of all men,
educated and ignorant, to use the new light to strip the common religious
life of all paralysing excrescences, to simplify it and to make it clear that
the sum and essence of Christianity is “unwavering trust of the heart in Him
who has given Himself to us in Christ Jesus as our Father, personal
assurance of faith because Christ with His work undertakes our cause,” and
to do all this with the tenderest sympathy for every true dumb religious
instinct which had made men wander away from the simplicity which is in

Christ Jesus, then Luther stands alone in his day and generation,
unapproachable by any other.
Hence it was that to the common people in every land in Europe up till
about 1540, when Calvin’s individuality began to make itself felt, Luther
represented the Reformation; and all who accepted the new teaching were
known as Lutherans, whether in England, the Low Countries, France, or
French speaking Switzerland.[7]
Ecclesiastical historians of the Reformed Church from the sixteenth century
downward have often been inclined to share Luther’s supremacy with
Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer was gifted with many qualities which Luther
lacked. He stood in freer relation to the doctrines and practices of the
mediæval Church, and his scheme of theology was perhaps wider and truer
than Luther’s. He had a keener intellectual insight, and was quicker to
discern the true doctrinal tendencies of their common religious verities. But
the way in which he regarded indulgences, and his manner of protesting
against them, showed his great inferiority to Luther as a religious guide.
“Oh the folly of it!” said Zwingli with his master Erasmus,—“the crass,
unmitigated stupidity of it all!” and they scorned it, and laughed at it, and
attacked it with the light keen shafts of raillery and derisive wit. “Oh the
pity of it!” said Luther; and he turned men travelling by the wrong road on
their quest for pardon (a real quest for them) into the right path. Zwingli
never seemed to see that under the purchase of indulgences, the tramping on
pilgrimages from shrine to shrine, the kissing, reverencing, and adoring of
relics, there was a real inarticulate cry for pardon of sins felt if not vividly
repented of. Luther knew it, and sympathised with it. He was a man of the
people, not merely because he was a peasant’s son and had studied at a
burgher University, but because he had shared the religion of the common
people. He had felt with them that the repeated visits of the plague, the new
mysterious diseases, the dread of the Turks, were punishments sent by God
because of the sins of the generation. He had gone through it all; plunged
more deeply in the terror, writhed more hopelessly under the wrath of God,
wandered farther on the wrong path in his quest for pardon, and at last had
seen the “Beatific Vision.” The deepest and truest sympathy with fellow-
men and the vision of God are needed to make a Reformer of the first rank,
and Luther had both as no other man had, during the first quarter of the
sixteenth century.

So men listened to him all over Europe wherever there had been a stirring
of the heart for reformation, and it would be hard to say where there had
been none. Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles in the east; Spaniards,
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutch, and Scots in the west; Swedes in the north,
and Italians in the south—all welcomed, and read, and were moved by what
Luther wrote. First the Theses, then sermons and tracts, then the trumpet
call To the Nobility of the German Nation and the Præludium to the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ, and, above all, his booklet On
the Liberty of a Christian Man. As men read, what had been only a hopeful
but troubled dream of the night became a vision in the light of day. They
heard proclaimed aloud in clear unfaltering speech what they had scarcely
dared to whisper to themselves. Fond and devout imaginations became
religious certainties. They risked all to get possession of the sayings of this
“man of God.” Cautious, dour Scotch burghers ventured ship and cargo for
the sake of the little quarto tracts hid in the bales of cloth which came to the
ports of Dundee and Leith. Oxford and Cambridge students passed them
from hand to hand in spite of Wolsey’s proclamations and Warham’s
precautions. Luther’s writings were eagerly studied in Paris by town and
University as early as May 1519.[8] Spanish merchants bought Luther’s
books at the Frankfurt Fair, spent some of their hard won profits in getting
them translated and printed in Spanish, and carried them over the Pyrenees
on their pack mules. Under the influence of these writings the Reformation
took shape, was something more than the devout imagination of a few pious
thinkers, and became an endeavour to give expression to common religious
certainties in change of creed, institutions, and worship. Thus Luther helped
the Reformation in every land. The actual beginnings in England, France,
the Netherlands, and elsewhere had come into existence years before Luther
had become known; it is possible that the movements might have come to
fruition apart from his efforts; but the influence of his writings was like that
of the sun when it quickens and makes the seed sprout that has been
“happed” in a tilled and sown field.

§ 7. National Characteristics.

It was not that the Reformation in any of these countries was to become
Lutheran in the end, or had a Lutheran stage of development. The number
of genuine Lutherans outside Germany and Scandinavia was very small.

Here and there a stray one was to be found, like Dr. Barnes in England or
Louis Berquin in France. One of the deepest principles of the great
Reformer’s teaching itself checked the idea of a purely Lutheran
Reformation which would embrace the whole Reformation Church. He
taught that the practical exercise of faith ought to manifest itself within the
great institutions of human life which have their origin in God—in
marriage, the family, the calling, and the State, in the ordinary life we lead
with its environment. Nations have their character and characteristics as
well as individual men, and they mould in natural ways the expression in
creed and institution of the religious certainties shared by all. The
Reformation in England was based on the same spiritual facts and forces
which were at work in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, but each land
had its own ways of embodying them. It is interesting to note how national
habits, memories, and even prejudices compelled the external embodiment
to take very varying shapes, and force the historian to describe the
Reformation in each country as something by itself.
The new spiritual life in England took a shape distinctly marked out for it
by the almost forgotten reformatory movement under Wiclif which had
been native to the soil. Scotland might have been expected to follow the
lead of England, and bring her ecclesiastical reconstruction into harmony
with that of her new and powerful ally. The English alliance was the great
political fact of the Scottish Reformation, and leading statesmen in both
countries desired the still nearer approach which conformity in the
organisation of the Churches could not fail to foster. But the memory of the
old French alliance was too strong for Cecil and Lethington, and Scotland
took her methods of Church government from France (not from Geneva),
and drifted farther and farther away from the model of the English
settlement. The fifteenth century War of the Public Weal repeated itself in
the Wars of Religion in France; and in the Edict of Nantes the Reformed
Church was offered and accepted guarantees for her independence such as a
feudal prince might have demanded. The old political local independence
which had characterised the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages
reasserted itself in the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Netherlands. The
civic republics of Switzerland demanded and received an ecclesiastical
form of government which suited the needs of their social and political life.

Yet amidst all this diversity there was the prevailing sense of an underlying
unity, and the knowledge that each national Church was part of the Catholic
Church Reformed was keener than among the Lutheran Churches.
Protestant England in the time of Edward VI. welcomed and supported
refugees banished by the Augsburg Interim from Strassburg. Frankfurt
received and provided for families who fled from the Marian persecutions
in England. Geneva became a city of refuge for oppressed Protestants from
every land, and these strangers frequently added quite a third to her
population. The feeling of fraternity was maintained, as in the days of the
early Church, by constant interchange of letters and messengers, and
correspondence gave a sense of unity which it was impossible to embody in
external political organisation. The sense of a common danger was also a
wonderful bond of kinship; and the feeling that Philip of Spain was always
plotting their destruction, softened inter-ecclesiastical jealousies. The same
sort of events occurred in all the Churches at almost the same times. The
Colloquy of Westminster (1559) was separated from the Colloquy of Poissy
(1561) by an interval of two years only, and the same questions were
discussed at both. Queen Elizabeth openly declared herself a Protestant by
partaking of the communion in both “kinds” at Easter, 1559; and on the
same day Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, made the same profession
in the same way at Pau in the south of France. Mary of Guise resolved that
the same festival should see the Scots united under the old faith, and thus
started the overt rebellion which ended in Scotland becoming a Protestant
nation.
The course of the Reformation in each country must be described
separately, and yet it is the one story with differences due to the accidents of
national temperaments, memories, and political institutions.

CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND UNDER
ZWINGLI.

§ 1. The political Condition of Switzerland.[9]

Switzerland in the sixteenth century was like no other country in Europe. It
was as divided as Germany or Italy, and yet it had a unity which they could
not boast. It was a confederation or little republic of communes and towns
of the primitive Teutonic type, in which the executive power was vested in
the community. The various cantons were all independent, but they were
banded together in a common league, and they had a federal flag—a white
cross on a red ground, which bore the motto, “Each for all, and all for
each.”
The separate members of the Federation had come into existence in a great
variety of ways, and all retained the distinctive marks of their earlier
history. The beginnings go back to the thirteenth century, when the three
Forest cantons, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, having freed themselves
from the dominion of their feudal lords, formed themselves into a Perpetual
League (1291), in which they pledged themselves to help each other to
maintain the liberty they had won. After the battle of Morgarten they
renewed the League at Brunnen (1315), promising again to aid each other
against all usurping lords. Hapsburg, the cradle of the Imperial House of
Austria, lies on the south-east bank of the river Aare, and the dread of this
great feudal family strengthened the bonds of the League; while the
victories of the independent peasants over the House of Austria, and later
over the Duke of Burgundy, increased its reputation. The three cantons grew
to be thirteen—Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Luzern, Zurich, Bern, Glarus,
Zug, Freiburg, Basel, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, and Appenzell. Other
districts, without becoming members of the League, sought its protection,
such as the Valais and the town and country under the Abbey of St. Gallen.
Other leagues were formed on its model among the peasantry of the

Rhætian Alps—in 1396 the League of the House of God (Lia da Ca’ Dè)—
at the head of which was the Church at Chur; in 1424 the Graubünden (Lia
Grischa or Gray League); in 1436 the League of the Ten Jurisdictions (Lia
della desch Dretturas). These three united in 1471 to make the Three
Perpetual Leagues of Rhætia. They were in close alliance with the Swiss
cantons from the fifteenth century, but did not become actual members of
the Swiss Confederacy until 1803. The Confederacy also made some
conquests, and the districts conquered were generally governed on forms of
mutual agreement between several cantons—a complicated system which
led to many bickerings, and intensified the quarrels which religion gave rise
to in the sixteenth century.
Each of these thirteen cantons preserved its own independence and its own
mode of government. Their political organisation was very varied, and
dependent to a large extent on their past history. The Forest cantons were
communes of peasant proprietors, dwelling in inaccessible valleys, and their
Diet was an assembly of all the male heads of families. Zurich was a
manufacturing and commercial town which had grown up under the
protection of an old ecclesiastical settlement whose foundation went back to
an age beyond that of Charles the Great. Bern was originally a hamlet,
nestling under the fortified keep of an old feudal family. In Zurich the
nobles made one of the “guilds” of the town, and the constitution was
thoroughly democratic. Bern, on the other hand, was an aristocratic
republic. But in all, the power in the last resort belonged to the people, who
were all freemen with full rights of citizenship.
The Swiss had little experience of episcopal government. Their relations
with the Papacy had been entirely political or commercial, the main article
of commerce being soldiers to form the Pope’s bodyguard, and infantry for
his Italian wars, and the business had been transacted through Legates.
Most of the territory of Switzerland was ecclesiastically divided between
the archiepiscopal provinces of Mainz and Besançon, and the river Aare
was the boundary between them. The division went back to the beginning
of Christianity in the land. The part of Switzerland which lay towards
France had been Christianised by Roman or Gallic missionaries; while the
rest, which sloped towards Germany, had been won to Christianity by Irish
preachers! Basel and Lausanne figure as bishoprics under Besançon; while
Constance, a bishopric under Mainz, asserted episcopal rights over Zurich

and the neighbourhood. The rugged, mountainous part of the country was
vaguely claimed for the province of Mainz without being definitely
assigned to any diocese. This contributed to make the Swiss people
singularly independent in all ecclesiastical matters, and taught them to
manage their Church affairs for themselves.
Even in Zurich, which acknowledged the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the
Bishop of Constance, the Council insisted on its right of supervising Church
properties, and convents were under State inspection.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century, intercourse with their neighbours
was changing the old simple manners of the Swiss. Their repeated victories
over Charles the Bold of Burgundy had led to the belief that the Swiss
infantry was the best in Europe, and nations at war with each other were
eager to hire Swiss troops. The custom had gradually grown up among the
Swiss cantons of hiring out soldiers to those who paid best for them. These
mercenaries, demoralised by making merchandise of their lives in quarrels
not their own, and by spending their pay in riotous living when they
returned to their native valleys, were corrupting the population of the
Confederacy. The system was demoralising in another way. The two great
Powers that trafficked in Swiss infantry were France and the Papacy; and
the French king on the one hand, and the Pope on the other, not merely kept
permanent agents in the various Swiss cantons, but gave pensions to leading
citizens to induce them to persuade the canton to which they belonged to
hire soldiers to the one side or the other. Zwingli, in his earlier days,
believed that the Papacy was the only Power with which the Swiss ought to
ally themselves, and received a papal pension for many years.

§ 2. Zwingli’s Youth and Education.[10]

Huldreich (Ulrich) Zwingli, the Reformer of Switzerland, was born on
January 1st, 1484 (fifty-two days after Luther), in the hamlet of Wildhaus
(or Wildenhaus), lying in the upper part of the Toggenburg valley, raised so
high above sea-level (3600 feet) that fruits refuse to ripen. It lies so exactly
on the central watershed of Europe, that the rain which falls on the one side
of the ridge of the red-tiled church roof goes into a streamlet which feeds
the Danube, and that which falls on the other finds its way to the Rhine. He
came third in a large family of eight sons and two daughters. His father,

also called Huldreich, was the headman of the commune, and his uncle,
Bartholomew Zwingli, was the parish priest. His education was
superintended by Bartholomew, who became Dean of Wesen in 1487, and
took the small Huldreich with him to his new sphere of work. The boy was
sent to the school in Wesen, where he made rapid progress. Bartholomew
Zwingli was somewhat of a scholar himself. When he discovered that his
nephew was a precocious boy, he determined to give him as good an
education as was possible, and sent him to Basel (Klein-Basel, on the east
bank of the Rhine) to a famous school taught, by the gentle scholar,
Gregory Buenzli (1494-98).
In four years the lad had outgrown the teacher’s powers of instruction, and
young Zwingli was sent to Bern to a school taught by the Humanist
Heinrich Wölfflin (Lupulus), who was half a follower of Erasmus and half a
Reformer. He was passionately fond of music, and lodged in one of the
Dominican convents in the town which was famed for the care bestowed on
musical education. Zwingli was so carried away by his zeal for the study,
that he had some thoughts of becoming a monk merely to gratify his
musical tastes. His family, who had no desire to see him enter a monastery,
removed him from Bern and sent him to the University of Vienna, where he
spent two years (1500-1502). There he had for friends and fellow-students,
Joachim von Watt[11] (Vadianus), Heinrich Loriti[12] of Glarus (Glareanus),
Johann Heigerlin[13] of Leutkirch (Faber), and Johann Maier of Eck, the
most notable of all Luther’s opponents. In 1502 he returned to Switzerland
and matriculated in the University of Basel. He became B.A. in 1504 and
M.A. in 1506, and in the same year became parish priest of Glarus.
The childhood and youth of Zwingli form a striking contrast to Luther’s
early years. He enjoyed the rude plenty of a well-to-do Swiss farmhouse,
and led a joyous young life. He has told us how the family gathered in the
stube in the long winter evenings, and how his grandmother kept the
children entranced with her tales from the Bible and her wonderful stories
of the saints. The family were all musical, and they sang patriotic folk-
songs, recording in rude verse the glories of Morgarten, Sempach, and the
victories over the tyrant of Burgundy. “When I was a child,” says Zwingli,
“if anyone said a word against our Fatherland, it put my back up at once.”
He was trained to be a patriot. “From boyhood I have shown so great, eager,
and sincere a love for our honourable Confederacy that I trained myself

diligently in every act and discipline to this end.” His uncle Bartholomew
was an admirer of the New Learning, and the boy was nurtured in
everything that went to make a Humanist, with all its virtues and failings.
He was educated, one might almost say, in the art of enjoying the present
without discriminating much between what was good and evil in
surrounding society. He was trained to take life as it came. No great sense
of sin troubled his youthful years. He never shuddered at the wrathful face
of Jesus, the Judge, gazing at him from blazoned church window. If he was
once tempted for a moment to become a monk, it was in order to enjoy
musical society, not to quench the sin that was burning him within, and to
win the pardon of an angry God. He took his ecclesiastical calling in a
careless, professional way. He belonged to a family connected on both sides
with the clergy, and he followed the family arrangement. Until far on in life
the question of personal piety did not seem to trouble him much, and he
never belonged, like Luther and Calvin, to the type of men who are the
leaders in a revival of personal religion. He became a Reformer because he
was a Humanist, with a liking for Augustinian theology; and his was such a
frank, honest nature that he could not see cheats and shams done in the
name of religion without denouncing them. To the end of his days he was
led more by his intellect than by the promptings of the heart, and in his
earlier years he was able to combine a deep sense of responsibility about
most things with a careless laxity of moral life.

§ 3. At Glarus and Einsiedeln.

At Glarus he was able to follow his Humanist studies, guided by the
influences which had surrounded him during his last year at Basel. Among
these his friendship with Thomas Wyttenbach was the most lasting.
Wyttenbach taught him, he tells us, to see the evils and abuses of
indulgences, the supreme authority of the Bible, that the death of Christ was
the sole price of the remission of sins, and that faith is the key which
unlocks to the soul the treasury of remission. All these thoughts he had
grasped intellectually, and made much of them in his sermons. He prized
preaching highly, and resolved to cultivate the gift by training himself on
the models of antiquity. He studied the Scriptures, joyfully welcomed the
new Greek Testament of Erasmus, published by Froben of Basel in 1516,
when he was at Einsiedeln, and copied out from it the whole of the Pauline

Epistles. On the wide margins of his MS. he wrote annotations from
Erasmus, Origen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Jerome. It was his constant
companion.
At Glarus he was personally introduced to the system of mercenary war and
of pensions in which Switzerland had engaged. He went to Italy twice as
regimental chaplain with the Glarus contingent, and was present at the fight
at Novara (1513), and on the fatal day at Marignano (1515).
His experiences in these campaigns convinced him of the harm in this
system of hiring out the Swiss to fight in others’ quarrels; and when he
became convinced of the evils attending it, he denounced the practice. His
outspoken language displeased many of his most influential parishioners,
especially those who were partisans of the French, and Zwingli resolved to
seek some other sphere of work.
The post of people’s priest at Einsiedeln, the famous monastery and
pilgrimage resort, was offered to him and accepted (April 14th, 1516). He
retained his official connection with Glarus, and employed a curate to do
his parish work. His fame as a preacher grew. His friends desired to see him
in a larger sphere, and through their exertions he was appointed to be
people’s priest in the Minster at Zurich. An objection had been made to his
selection on the ground that he had disgracefully wronged the daughter of a
citizen of Einsiedeln; and his letter of vindication, while it exonerates him
from the particular charge brought against him, shows that he was by no
means clear of the laxity in private morals which characterised the Swiss
clergy of the time. The stipend attached to his office in the Great Minster
was very small, and on this ground Zwingli felt himself justified,
unwarrantably, in retaining his papal pension.[14]

§ 4. Zwingli in Zurich.

Zurich, when Zwingli went to it, was an imperial city. It had grown up
around the Great Minster and the Minster of Our Lady (the Little Minster),
and had developed into a trading and manufacturing centre. Its citizens,
probably owing to the ecclesiastical origin of the town, had long engaged in
quarrels with the clergy, and had generally been successful. They took
advantage of the rivalries between the heads of the two Minsters and the

Emperor’s bailiff to assert their independence, and had passed laws
subordinating the ecclesiastical authorities to the secular rule. The taxes
were levied on ecclesiastical as well as on secular property; all the convents
were under civic control, and liable to State inspection. The popes, anxious
to keep on good terms with the Swiss who furnished soldiers for their wars,
had expressly permitted in Zurich what they would not have allowed
elsewhere.
The town was ruled by a Council or Senate composed of the Masters of the
thirteen “gilds” (twelve trades’ gilds and one gild representing the
patriciate). The Burgomaster, with large powers, presided. A great Council
of 212 members was called together on special occasions.
The city of Zurich, with its thoroughly democratic constitution, was a very
fitting sphere for a man like Zwingli. He had made a name for himself by
this time. He had become a powerful preacher, able to stir and move the
people by his eloquence; he was in intimate relations with the more
distinguished German Humanists, introduced to them by his friend Heinrich
Loriti of Glarus (known as Glareanus). He had already become the centre of
an admiring circle of young men of liberal views. His place as people’s
preacher gave to a man of his popular gifts a commanding position in the
most democratic town in Switzerland, where civic and European politics
were eagerly discussed. He went there in December 1519.
His work as a Reformer began almost at once. Bernhard Samson or Sanson,
a seller of indulgences for Switzerland, came to Zurich to push his trade.
Zwingli had already encountered him at Einsiedeln, and, prompted by the
Bishop of Constance and his vicar-general, John Faber, both of whom
disliked the indulgences, had preached against him. He now persuaded the
Council of Zurich to forbid Samson’s stay in the town.
The papal treatment of the Swiss Reformer was very different from what
had been meted out to Luther. Samson received orders from Rome to give
no trouble to the Zurichers, and to leave the city rather than quarrel with
them. The difference, no doubt, arose from the desire of the Curia to do
nothing to hinder the supply of Swiss soldiers for the papal wars; but it was
also justified by the contrast in the treatment of the subject by the two
Reformers. Luther struck at a great moral abuse, and his strokes cut deeply
into the whole round of mediæval religious life, with its doctrine of a

special priesthood; he made men see the profanity of any claim made by
men to pardon sin, or to interfere between their fellow-men and God.
Zwingli took the whole matter more lightly. His position was that of
Erasmus and the Humanists. He could laugh at and ridicule the whole
proceeding, and thought most of the way in which men allowed themselves
to be gulled and duped by clever knaves. He never touched the deep
practical religious question which Luther raised, and which made his
challenge to the Papacy reverberate over Western Europe.
From the outset Zwingli became a prominent figure in Zurich. He
announced to the astonished Chapter of the Great Minster, to whom he
owed his appointment, that he meant to give a series of continuous
expositions of the Gospel of St. Matthew; that he would not follow the
scholastic interpretation of passages in the Gospel, but would endeavour to
make Scripture its own interpreter. The populace crowded to hear sermons
of this new kind. In order to reach the country people, Zwingli preached in
the market-place on the Fridays, and his fame spread throughout the
villages. The Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinian Eremites tried to
arouse opposition, but unsuccessfully. In his sermons he denounced sins
suggested in the passages expounded, and found occasion to deny the
doctrines of Purgatory and the Intercession of Saints.
His strongest attack on the existing ecclesiastical system was made in a
sermon on tithes, which, to the distress of the Provost of the Minster, he
declared to be merely voluntary offerings. (He had been reading Hus’ book
On the Church.) He must have carried most of the Chapter with him in his
schemes for improvement, for in June 1520 the Breviary used in the
Minster was revised by Zwingli and stripped of some blemishes. In the
following year (March 1521), some of the Zurichers who were known to be
among Zwingli’s warmest admirers, the printer Froschauer among them,
asserted their convictions by eating flesh meat publicly in Lent. The affair
made a great sensation, and the Reformers were brought before the Council
of the city. They justified themselves by declaring that they had only
followed the teaching of Zwingli, who had shown them that nothing was
binding on the consciences of Christians which was not commanded in the
Scriptures. Zwingli at once undertook their defence, and published his
sermon, Selection or Liberty concerning Foods; an offence and scandal;
whether there is any Authority for forbidding Meat at certain times (April

16th, 1522). He declared that in such matters the responsibility rests with
the individual, who may use his freedom provided he avoids a public
scandal.
The matter was felt to be serious, and the Council, after full debate, passed
an ordinance which was meant to be a compromise. It was to the effect that
although the New Testament makes no rule on the subject, fasting in Lent is
a very ancient custom, and must not be set aside until dealt with by
authority, and that the priests of the three parishes of Zurich were to
dissuade the people from all violation of the ordinance.
The Bishop of Constance thereupon interfered, and sent a Commission,
consisting of his suffragan and two others, to investigate and report. They
met the Small Council, and in a long address insisted that the Church had
authority in such matters, and that the usages it commanded must be
obeyed. Zwingli appeared before the Great Council, and, in spite of the
efforts of the Commission to keep him silent, argued in defence of liberty of
conscience. In the end the Council resolved to abide by its compromise, but
asked the Bishop of Constance to hold a Synod of his clergy and come to a
resolution upon the matter which would be in accordance with the law of
Christ. This resolution of the Council really set aside the episcopal
authority, and was a revolt against the Roman Church.
Political affairs favoured the rebellion. At the Swiss Diet held at Luzern
(May 1521), the cantons, in spite of the vehement remonstrances of Zurich,
made a treaty with France, and allowed the French king to recruit a force of
16,000 Swiss mercenaries. Zurich, true to its protest, refused to allow
recruiting within its lands. Its citizens chafed at the loss of money and the
separation from the other cantons, and Zwingli became very unpopular. He
had now made up his mind that the whole system of pensions and
mercenary service was wrong, and had resigned his own papal pension. Just
then the Pope asked Zurich, which supplied him with half of his bodyguard,
for a force of soldiers to be used in defence of his States, promising that
they would not be used to fight the French, among whose troops were many
Swiss mercenaries from other cantons. The Council refused. Nevertheless,
six thousand Zurichers set out to join the papal army. The Council recalled
them, and after some adventures, in one of which they narrowly escaped
fighting with the Swiss mercenaries in the service of France, they returned
home. This expedition, which brought neither money nor honour to the

Zurichers, turned the tide of popular feeling, and the Council forbade all
foreign service. When the long connection between Zurich and the Papacy
is considered, this decree was virtually a breach between the city and the
Pope. It made the path of the Reformation much easier (Jan. 1522), and
Zwingli’s open break with the Papacy was only a matter of time.
It came with the publication of the Archeteles (August 1522), a book hastily
written, like all Zwingli’s works, which contained a defence of all that he
had done, and a programme, ecclesiastical and political, for the future. The
book increased the zeal of Zwingli’s opponents. His sermons were often
interrupted by monks and others instigated by them. The burgomaster was
compelled to interfere in order to maintain the peace of the town. He issued
an order on his own authority, without any appeal to the Bishop of
Constance, that the pure Word of God was to be preached. At an assembly
of the country clergy of the canton, the same decision was reached; and
town and clergy were ready to move along the path of reformation. Shortly
before this (July 2nd), Zwingli and ten other priests petitioned the bishop to
permit his clergy to contract legal marriages. The document had no practical
effect, save to show the gradual advance of ideas. It disclosed the condition
of things that sacerdotal celibacy had produced in Switzerland.

§ 5. The Public Disputations.

In these circumstances, the Great Council, now definitely on Zwingli’s side,
resolved to hold a Public Disputation to settle the controversies in religion;
and Zwingli drafted sixty-seven theses to be discussed. These articles
contain a summary of his doctrinal teaching. They insist that the Word of
God, the only rule of faith, is to be received upon its own authority and not
on that of the Church. They are very full of Christ, the only Saviour, the
true Son of God, who has redeemed us from eternal death and reconciled us
to God. They attack the Primacy of the Pope, the Mass, the Invocation of
the Saints, the thought that men can acquire merit by their good works,
Fasts, Pilgrimages, and Purgatory. Of sacerdotal celibacy he says, “I know
of no greater nor graver scandal than that which forbids lawful marriage to
priests, and yet permits them on payment of money to have concubines and
harlots. Fie for shame!”[15] The theses consist of single short sentences.

The Disputation, the first of the four which marked the stages of the legal
Reformation in Zurich, was held in the Town Hall of the city on January
29th, 1523. More than six hundred representative men gathered to hear it.
All the clergy of the canton were present; Faber watched the proceedings on
behalf of the Bishop of Constance; many distinguished divines from other
parts of Switzerland were present. Faber seems to have contented himself
with asking that the Disputation should be delayed until a General Council
should meet, and Zwingli replied that competent scholars who were good
Christians were as able as a Council to decide what was the meaning of the
Holy Scriptures. The result of the Disputation was that the burgomaster
declared that Zwingli had justified his teaching, and that he was no heretic.
The canton of Zurich practically adopted Zwingli’s views, and the Reformer
was encouraged to proceed further.
His course of conduct was eminently prudent. He invariably took pains to
educate the people up to further changes by explaining them carefully in
sermons, and by publishing and circulating these discourses. He considered
that it was his duty to teach, but that it belonged to the civic authorities to
make the changes; and he himself made none until they were authorised. He
had very strong views against the use of images in churches, and had
preached vigorously against their presence. Some of his more ardent hearers
began to deface the statues and pictures. The Great Council accordingly
took the whole question into consideration, and decided that a second
Public Disputation should be held, at which the matter might be publicly
discussed. This discussion (October 1523) lasted for two days. More than
eight hundred persons were present, of whom three hundred and fifty were
clergy. On the first day, Zwingli set forth his views on the presence of
images in churches, and wished their use forbidden. The Council decided
that the statues and pictures should be removed from the churches, but
without disturbance; the rioters were to be pardoned, but their leader was to
be banished from the city for two years. The second day’s subject of
conference was the Mass. Zwingli pled that the Mass was not a sacrifice,
but a memorial of the death of our Lord, and urged that the abuses
surrounding the simple Christian rite should be swept away. The presence
of Anabaptists at this conference, and their expressions in debate, warned
the magistrates that they must proceed cautiously, and they contented
themselves with appointing a commission of eight—two from the Council
and six clergymen—to inquire and report. Meanwhile the clergy were to be

informed how to act, and the letter of instruction was to be written by
Zwingli. The authorities also deputed preachers to go to the outlying parts
of the canton and explain the whole matter carefully to the people.
The letter which Zwingli addressed to the clergy of Zurich canton is a brief
statement of Reformation principles. It is sometimes called the Instruction.
Zwingli entitles it, A brief Christian Introduction which the Honourable
Council of the city of Zurich has sent to the pastors and preachers living in
its cities, lands, and wherever its authority extends, so that they may
henceforth in unison announce and preach the gospel.[16] It describes sin,
the law, God’s way of salvation, and then goes on to speak of images.
Zwingli’s argument is that the presence of statues and pictures in churches
has led to idolatry, and that they ought to be removed. The concluding
section discusses the Mass. Here the author states very briefly what he
elaborated afterwards, that the main thought in the Eucharist is not the
repetition of the sacrifice of Christ, but its faithful remembrance, and that
the Romish doctrine and ceremony of the Mass has been so corrupted to
superstitious uses that it ought to be thoroughly reformed.
This letter had a marked effect. The village priests everywhere refused to
say Mass according to the old ritual. But there was a section of the people,
including members of the chapter of the Minster, who shrunk from changes
in this central part of Christian worship. In deference to their feelings, the
Council resolved that the Holy Supper should be meanwhile dispensed
according to both the Reformed and the mediæval rite; in the one
celebration the cup was given to the laity, and in the other it was withheld.
No change was made in the liturgy. Then came a third conference, and a
fourth; and at last the Mass was abolished. On April 13th, 1525, the first
Evangelical communion service took place in the Great Minster, and the
mediæval worship was at an end. Other changes had been made. The
monasteries had been secularised, and the monks who did not wish to leave
their calling were all gathered together in the Franciscan convent. An
amicable arrangement was come to about other ecclesiastical foundations,
and the money thus secured was mainly devoted to education.
From 1522, Zwingli had been living in “clerical” marriage with Anna
Reinhard, the widow of a wealthy Zurich burgher. She was called his wife
by his friends, although no legal marriage ceremony had been performed. It
is perhaps difficult for us to judge the man and the times. The so-called

“clerical” marriages were universal in Switzerland. Man and woman took
each other for husband and wife, and were faithful. There was no public
ceremony. All questions of marriage, divorce, succession, and so forth, were
then adjudicated in the ecclesiastical and not in the civil courts; and as the
Canon Law had insisted that no clergyman could marry, all such “clerical”
marriages were simple concubinage in the eye of the law, and the children
were illegitimate. The offence against the vow of chastity was condoned by
a fine paid to the bishop. As early as 1523, William Röubli, a Zurich priest,
went through a public form of marriage, and his example was followed by
others; but it may be questioned whether these marriages were recognised
to be legal until Zurich passed its own laws about matrimonial cases in
1525.
Luther in his pure-hearted and solemnly sympathetic way had referred to
these clerical marriages in his Address to the Christian Nobility of the
German Nation (1520).

“We see,” he says, “how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a poor
priest is encumbered with a woman and children, and burdened in his
conscience, and no man does anything to help him, though he might
very well be helped.... I will not conceal my honest counsel, nor
withhold comfort from that unhappy crowd, who now live in trouble
with wife and children, and remain in shame, with a heavy conscience,
hearing their wife called a priest’s harlot and the children bastards.... I
say that these two (who are minded in their hearts to live together
always in conjugal fidelity) are surely married before God.”

He had never succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, and had kept his
body and soul pure; and for that very reason he could sympathise with and
help by his sympathy those who had fallen. Zwingli, on the other hand, had
deliberately contracted this illicit alliance after he had committed himself to
the work of a Reformer. The action remains a permanent blot on his
character, and places him on a different level from Luther and from Calvin.
It has been already noted that Zwingli had always an intellectual rather than
a spiritual appreciation of the need of reformation,—that he was much more
of a Humanist than either Luther or Calvin,—but what is remarkable is that
we have distinct evidence that the need of personal piety had impressed
itself on him during these years, and that he passed through a religious

crisis, slight compared with that of Luther, but real so far as it went. He fell
ill of the plague (Sept.-Nov. 1519), and the vision of death and recovery
drew from him some hymns of resignation and thanksgiving.[17] The death
of his brother Andrew (Nov. 1520) seems to have been the real turning-
point in his inward spiritual experience, and his letters and writings are
evidence of its reality and permanence. Perhaps the judgment which a
contemporary and friend, Martin Bucer, passed ought to content us:

“When I read your letter to Capito, that you had made public
announcement of your marriage, I was almost beside myself in my
satisfaction. For it was the one thing I desired for you.... I never
believed you were unmarried after the time when you indicated to the
Bishop of Constance in that tract that you desired this gift. But as I
considered the fact that you were thought to be a fornicator by some,
and by others held to have little faith in Christ, I could not understand
why you concealed it so long, and that the fact was not declared
openly, and with candour and diligence. I could not doubt that you
were led into this course by considerations which could not be put
aside by a conscientious man. However that may be, I triumph in the
fact that now you have come up in all things to the apostolic
definition.”[18]

The Reformation was spreading beyond Zurich. Evangelical preachers had
arisen in many of the other cantons, and were gaining adherents.

§ 6. The Reformation outside Zurich.

Basel, the seat of a famous university and a centre of German Humanism,
contained many scholars who had come under the influence of Thomas
Wyttenbach, Zwingli’s teacher. Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, a disciple of
Erasmus, a learned student of the Scriptures, had begun as early as 1512 to
show how the ceremonies and many of the usages of the Church had no
authority from the Bible. He worked in Basel from 1512 to 1520. Johannes
Oecolampadius (Hussgen or Heusgen), who had been one of Luther’s
supporters in 1521, came to Basel in 1522 as Lecturer on the Holy
Scriptures in the University. His lectures and his sermons to the
townspeople caused such a movement that the bishop forbade their delivery.

The citizens asked for a Public Disputation. Two held in the month of
December 1524—the one conducted by a priest of the name of Stör against
clerical celibacy, and the other led by William Farel[19]—raised the courage
of the Evangelical party. In February 1525 the Council of the town installed
Oecolampadius as the preacher in St. Martin’s Church, and authorised him
to make such changes as the Word of God demanded. This was the
beginning. Oecolampadius became a firm friend of Zwingli’s, and they
worked together.
In Bern also the Reformation made progress. Berthold Haller[20] and
Sebastian Meyer[21] preached the Gospel with courage for several years,
and were upheld by the painter Nicolaus Manuel, who had great influence
with the citizens. The Council decided to permit freedom in preaching, if in
accordance with the Word of God; but they refused to permit innovations in
worship or ceremonies; and they forbade the introduction of heretical books
into the town. The numbers of the Evangelical party increased rapidly, and
in the beginning of 1527 they had a majority in both the great and the small
Councils. It was then decided to have a Public Disputation.
The occasion was one of the most momentous in the history of the
Reformation in Switzerland. Hitherto Zurich had stood alone; if Bern
joined, the two most powerful cantons in Switzerland would be able to hold
their own. There was need for union. The Forest cantons had been uttering
threats, and Zwingli’s life was not secure. Bern was fully alive to the
importance of the proposed discussion, and was resolved to make it as
imposing as possible, and that the disputants on both sides should receive
fair play and feel themselves in perfect freedom and safety. They sent
special invitations to the four bishops whose dioceses entered their
territories—the Bishops of Constance, Basel, Valais, and Lausanne; and
they did their best to assemble a sufficient number of learned Romanist
theologians.[22] They promised not only safe-conducts, but the escort of a
herald to and from the canton.[23] It soon became evident, however, that the
Romanist partisans had no great desire to come to the Disputation. None of
the bishops invited appears to have even thought of being present save the
Bishop of Lausanne, and he found reasons for declining.[24] The
Disputation was viewed with anxiety by the Romanist partisans, and in a
letter sent from Speyer (December 28th) the Emperor Charles V. strongly

remonstrated with the magistrates of Bern.[25] The Bernese were not to be
intimidated. They issued their invitations, and made every arrangement to
give éclat to the great Disputation.[26] Berthold Haller, with the help of
Zwingli, had drafted ten Theses, which were to be defended by himself and
his colleague, Francis Kolb; Zwingli had translated them into Latin and
Farel into French for the benefit of strangers; and they were sent out with
the invitations. They were—(1) The Holy Catholic Church, of which Christ
is the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides therein, and does not
hear the voice of a stranger.[27] (2) The Church of Christ makes no law nor
statute apart from the Word of God, and consequently those human
ordinances which are called the commandments of the Church do not bind
our consciences unless they are founded on the Word of God and agreeable
thereto. (3) Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and price for
the sins of the whole world; and all who think they can win salvation in any
other way, or have other satisfaction for their sins, renounce Christ. (4) It is
impossible to prove from Scripture that the Body and Blood of Christ are
corporeally present in the bread of the Holy Supper. (5) The Mass, in which
Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and the dead, is
contrary to the Holy Scripture, is a gross affront to the Passion and Death of
Christ, and is therefore an abomination before God. (6) Since Christ alone
died for us, and since He is the only mediator and intercessor between God
and believers, He only ought to be invoked; and all other mediators and
advocates ought to be rejected, since they have no warrant in the Holy
Scripture of the Bible. (7) There is no trace of Purgatory after death in the
Bible; and therefore all services for the dead, such as vigils, Masses, and the
like, are vain things. (8) To make pictures and adore them is contrary to the
Old and New Testament, and they ought to be destroyed where there is the
chance that they may be adored. (9) Marriage is not forbidden to any estate
by the Holy Scripture, but wantonness and fornication are forbidden to
everyone in whatever estate he may be. (10) The fornicator is truly
excommunicated by the Holy Scripture, and therefore wantonness and
fornication are much more scandalous among the clergy than in the other
estate.
These Theses represent in succinct fashion the preaching in the Reformed
Church in Switzerland, and the fourth states in its earliest form what grew
to be the Zwinglian doctrine of the Holy Supper.[28]

The Council of Bern had sent invitations to be present to the leading
preachers in the Evangelical cities of Germany and Switzerland. Bucer and
Capito came from Strassburg, Jacob Augsburger from Mühlhausen,
Ambrose Blaarer from Constance, Sebastian Wagner,[29] surnamed
Hofmeister (Œconomus), from Schaffhausen, Oecolampadius from Basel,
and many others.[30] Zwingli’s arrival was eagerly expected. The Zurichers
were resolved not to trust their leader away from the city without a strong
guard, and sent him to Bern with an escort of three hundred men-at-arms. A
great crowd of citizens and strangers filled the arcades which line both sides
of the main street, and every window in the many-storied houses had its
sightseers to watch the Zurichers tramping up from gate to cathedral with
their pastor safe in the centre of the troop.
Romanist theologians did not muster in anything like the same strength. The
men of the four Forest cantons stood sullenly aloof; the authorities in
French-speaking Switzerland had no liking for the Disputation, and the
strongly Romanist canton of Freiburg did its best to prevent the theologians
of Neuchâtel, Morat, and Grandson from appearing at Bern; but in spite of
the hindrances placed in their way no less than three hundred and fifty
ecclesiastics gathered to the Disputation. The conference was opened on
January 15th (le dimenche après la feste de la circuncision),[31] and was
continued in German till the 24th; on the 25th a second discussion, lasting
two days, was begun, for the benefit of strangers, in Latin. “When la
Dispute des Welches (strangers) was opened, a stranger doctor (of Paris)
came forward along with some priests speaking the same language as
himself. He attacked the Ten Theses, and William Farel, preacher at Aigle,
answered him.”[32] The more distinguished Romanist theologians who were
present seem to have refrained from taking part in the discussion. The
Bishop of Lausanne defended their silence on the grounds that they
objected to discuss such weighty matters in the vulgar tongue; that no
opportunity was given to them to speak in Latin; and that when the Emperor
had interdicted the Disputation they were told by the authorities of Bern
that they might leave the city if it so pleased them.[33]
The result of the Disputation was that the authorities and citizens of Bern
were confirmed in their resolve to adopt the Reformation. The Disputation
ended on the 26th of January (1528), and on the 7th of February the Mass
was declared to be abolished, and a sermon took its place; images were

removed from the churches; the monasteries were secularised, and the funds
were used partly for education and partly to make up for the French and
papal pensions, which were now definitely renounced, and declared to be
illegal.
The two sermons which Zwingli preached in the cathedral during the
Disputation made a powerful impression on the people of Bern. It was after
one of them that M. de Watteville, the Advoyer or President of the
Republic, declared himself to be convinced of the truth of the Evangelical
faith, and with his whole family accepted the Reformation. His eldest son, a
clergyman whose family interest had procured for him no less than thirteen
benefices, and who, it was commonly supposed, would be the next Bishop
of Lausanne, renounced them all to live the life of a simple country
gentleman.[34]
The republic of Bern for long regarded the Ten Theses as the charter of its
religious faith. Not content with declaring the Reformation legally
established within the city, the authorities of Bern sent despatches or
delegates to all the cities and lands under their control, informing them of
what they had done, and inviting them to follow their example. They
insisted that preachers of the Gospel must be at liberty to deliver their
message without interruption throughout all their territories. They promised
that they would maintain the liberty of both cults until means had been
taken to find out which the majority of the inhabitants preferred, and that
the decision would be taken by vote in presence of commissioners sent
down from Bern.[35] When the majority of the parishioners accepted the
Reformation, the new doctrinal standard was the Ten Theses, and the
Council of Bern sent directions for the method of dispensing the
Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and for the solemnisation of
marriages. The whole of the German-speaking portion of the canton proper
and its dependences seem to have accepted the Reformation at once. Bern
had, besides, some French-speaking districts under its own exclusive
control, and others over which it ruled along with Freiburg. The progress of
the new doctrines was slower in these district, but it may be said that they
had all embraced the Reformation before the end of 1530. The history of the
Reformation in French-speaking Switzerland belongs, however, to the next
chapter, and the efforts of Bern to evangelise its subjects in these districts
will be described there.

Not content with this, the Council of Bern constituted itself the patron and
protector of persecuted Protestants outside their own lands, and the
evangelisation of western Switzerland owed almost everything to its
fostering care.[36]
Thus Bern in the west and Zurich in the east stood forth side by side
pledged to the Reformation.
The cantonal authorities of Appenzell had declared, as early as 1524, that
Gospel preaching was to have free course within their territories. Thomas
Wyttenbach had been people’s priest in Biel from 1507, and had leavened
the town with his Evangelical preaching. In 1524 he courageously married.
The ecclesiastical authorities were strong enough to get him deposed; but a
year or two later the citizens compelled the cantonal Council to permit the
free preaching of the Gospel. Sebastian Hofmeister preached in
Schaffhausen, and induced its people to declare for the Reformation. St.
Gallen was evangelised by the Humanist Joachim von Watt (Vadianus), and
by John Kessler, who had studied at Wittenberg. In German Switzerland
only Luzern and the Forest cantons remained completely and immovably
attached to the Roman Church, and refused to tolerate any Evangelical
preaching within their borders. The Swiss Confederacy was divided
ecclesiastically into two opposite camps.
The strong religious differences could not but affect the political cohesion
of the Swiss Confederacy, linked together as it was by ties comparatively
slight. The wonder is that they did not altogether destroy it.
As early as 1522, the Bishop of Constance had asked the Swiss Federal Diet
at their meeting at Baden to prohibit the preaching of the Reformation
doctrines within the Federation; and the next year the Diet, which met again
at Baden (Sept. 1523), issued a declaration that all who practised religious
innovations were worthy of punishment. The deputies from Luzern were
especially active in inducing the Diet to pass this resolution. The attempt to
use the Federation for the purpose of religious persecution, therefore, first
came from the Romanist side. Nor did they content themselves with
declarations in the Diet. The Romanist canton of Unterwalden, being
informed that some of the peasants in the Bernese Oberland had complained
that the Reformation had been forced upon them, crossed the Bernese
frontier and committed an act of war. Bern smarted under the insult.

These endeavours on the part of his opponents led Zwingli to meditate on
plans for leaguing together for the purposes of mutual defence all who had
accepted the Reformation. His plans from the first went beyond the Swiss
Confederacy.
The imperial city of Constance, the seat of the diocese which claimed
ecclesiastical authority over Zurich, had been mightily moved by the
preaching of Ambrose Blaarer, and had come over to the Protestant faith.
The bishop retired to Meersburg and his chapter to Ueberlingen. The city
feared the attack of Austria, and craved protection from the Swiss
Protestants. Its alliance was valuable to them, for, along with Lindau, it
commanded the whole Lake of Constance. Zurich thereupon asked that
Constance be admitted within the Swiss Federation. This was refused by the
Federal Diet (Nov. 1527). Zurich then entered into a Christian Civic League
(das christliche Bürgerrecht) with Constance,—a league based on their
common religious beliefs,—promising to defend each other if attacked. The
example once set was soon followed, and the two following years saw the
League increasing rapidly. Bern joined in June 1528, St. Gallen in Nov.
1528, Biel in January, Mühlhausen in February, Basel in March, and
Schaffhausen in October, 1529. Strassburg was admitted in January 1530.
Even Hesse and Würtemburg washed to join. Bern and Zurich came to an
agreement that Evangelical preaching must be allowed in the Common
Lands, and that no one was to be punished for his religious opinions.
The combination looked so threatening and contained such possibilities that
Ferdinand of Austria proposed a counter-league among the Romanist
cantons; and a Christian Union, in which Luzern, Zug, Schwyz, Uri, and
Unterwalden allied themselves with the Duchy of Austria, was founded in
1529, having for its professed objects the preservation of the mediæval
religion, with some reforms carried out under the guidance of the
ecclesiastical authorities. The Confederates pledged themselves to secure
for each other the right to punish heretics. This League had also its
possibilities of extension. It was thought that Bavaria and Salzburg might
join. The canton of the Valais had already leagued itself with Savoy against
Geneva, and brought its ally within the Christian Union. The very
formation of the Leagues threatened war, and occasions of hostilities were
not lacking. Austria was eager to attack Constance, and Bern longed to
punish Unterwalden for its unprovoked invasion of Bernese territory. The

condition and protection of the Evangelical population in the Common
Lands and in the Free Bailiwicks demanded settlement, more especially as
the Romanist cantons had promised to support each other in asserting their
right to punish heretics. War seemed to be inevitable. Schaffhausen,
Appenzell, and the Graubünden endeavoured to mediate; but as neither
Zurich nor Bern would listen to any proposals which did not include the
right of free preaching, their efforts were in vain. The situation, difficult
enough, was made worse by the action of the canton of Schwyz, which,
having caught a Zurich pastor named Kaiser on its territory, had him
condemned and burnt as a heretic. This was the signal for war. It was agreed
that the Zurichers should attack the Romanist cantons, while Bern defended
the Common Lands, and, if need be, the territory of her sister canton. The
plan of campaign was drafted by Zwingli himself, who also laid down the
conditions of peace. His proposals were, that the Forest cantons must allow
the free preaching of the Gospel within their lands; that they were to
forswear pensions from any external Power, and that all who received them
should be punished both corporeally and by fine; that the alliance with
Austria should be given up; and that a war indemnity should be paid to
Zurich and to Bern. While the armies were facing each other the Zurichers
received a strong appeal from Hans Oebli, the Landamann of Glarus, to
listen to the proposals of the enemy. The common soldiers disliked the
internecine strife. They looked upon each other as brothers, and the outposts
of both armies were fraternising. In these circumstances the Zurich army
(for it was the Swiss custom that the armies on the field concluded treaties)
accepted the terms of peace offered by their opponents. The treaty is known
as the First Peace of Kappel (June 1529). It provided that the alliance
between Austria and the Romanist cantons should be dissolved, and the
treaties “pierced and slit” (the parchments were actually cut in pieces by the
dagger in sight of all); that in the Common Lands no one was to be
persecuted for his religious opinions; that the majority should decide
whether the old faith was to be retained or not, and that bailiffs of moderate
opinions should be sent to rule them; that neither party should attack the
other because of religion; that a war indemnity should be paid by the
Romanist cantons to Zurich and Bern (the amount was fixed at 2500
Sonnenkronen); and that the abolition of foreign pensions and mercenary
service should be recommended to Luzern and the Forest cantons. The
treaty contained the seeds of future war; for the Zurichers believed that they

had secured the right of free preaching within the Romanist cantons, while
these cantons believed that they had been left to regulate their own internal
economy as they pleased. Zwingli would have preferred a settlement after
war, and the future justified his apprehensions.
Three months after the First Peace of Kappel, Zwingli was summoned to
the Marburg Colloquy, and the Reformation in Switzerland became
inevitably connected with the wider sphere of German ecclesiastical
politics. It may be well, however, to reserve this until later, and finish the
internal history of the Swiss movement.
The First Peace of Kappel was only a truce, and left both parties irritated
with each other. The friction was increased when the Protestants discovered
that the Romanist cantons would not admit free preaching within their
territories. They also shrewdly suspected that, despite the tearing and
burning of the documents, the understanding with Austria was still
maintained. An event occurred which seemed to justify their suspicions. An
Italian condottiere, Giovanni Giacomo de’ Medici, had seized and held
(1525-31) the strong position called the Rocco di Musso on the Lake of
Como, and from this stronghold he dominated the whole lake. This ruffian
had murdered Martin Paul and his son, envoys from the Graubünden to
Milan, and had crossed the lake and harried the fertile valley of the Adda,
known as the Val Tellina, which was then within the territories of the
Graubünden (Grisons). The Swiss Confederacy were bound to defend their
neighbours; but when appeal was made, the Romanist cantons refused, and
the hand of Austria was seen behind the refusal. Besides, at the Federal
Diets the Romanist cantons had refused to listen to any complaints of
persecutions for religion within their lands. At a meeting between Zurich
and her allies, it was resolved that the Romanist cantons should be
compelled to abolish the system of foreign pensions, and permit free
preaching within their territories. Zurich was for open war, but the advice of
Bern prevailed. It was resolved that if the Romanist cantons would not
agree to these proposals, Zurich and her allies should prevent wine, wheat,
salt, and iron from passing through their territories to the Forest cantons.
The result was that the Forest cantons declared war, invaded Zurich while
that canton was unprepared, fought and won the battle of Kappel, at which
Zwingli was slain. He had accompanied the little army of Zurich as its
chaplain. The victory of the Romanists produced a Second Peace of Kappel

which reversed the conditions of the first. War indemnities were exacted
from most of the Protestant cantons. It was settled that each canton was to
be left free to manage its own religious affairs; that the Christian Civic
League was to be dissolved; and a number of particular provisions were
made which practically secured the rights of Romanist without
corresponding advantages to Protestant minorities. The territories of Zurich
were left untouched, but the city was compelled by the charter of Kappel to
grant rights to her rural districts. She bound herself to consult them in all
important matters, and particularly not to make war or peace without their
consent.
As a result of this ruinous defeat, and of the death of Zwingli which
accompanied it, Zurich lost her place as the leading Protestant canton, and
the guidance of the Reformation movement fell more and more into the
hands of Geneva, which was an ally but not a member of the Confederation.
Another and more important permanent result of this Second Peace of
Kappel was that it was seen in Switzerland as in Germany that while the
Reformation could not be destroyed, it could not win for itself the whole
country, and that Roman Catholics and Protestants must divide the cantons
and endeavour to live peaceably side by side.
The history of the Reformation in Switzerland after the death of Zwingli is
so linked with the wider history of the movement in Germany and in
Geneva, that it can scarcely be spoken about separately. It is also intimately
related to the differences which separated Zwingli from Luther in the
doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

§ 7. The Sacramental Controversy.[37]

In the Bern Disputation of 1528, the fourth thesis said “it cannot be proved
from the Scripture that the Body and Blood of Christ are substantially and
corporeally received in the Eucharist,”[38] and the statement became a
distinctive watchword of the early Swiss Reformation. This thesis, a
negative one, was perhaps the earliest official statement of a bold attempt to
get rid of the priestly miracle in the Mass, which was the strongest
theoretical and practical obstacle to the acceptance of the fundamental
Protestant thought of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. The question
had been seriously exercising the attention of all the leading theologians of

the Reformation, and this very trenchant way of dismissing it had suggested
itself simultaneously to theologians in the Low Countries, in the district of
the Upper Rhine, and in many of the imperial cities. It had been proclaimed
in all its naked simplicity by Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, the
theologian of the German democracy; but it was Zwingli who worked at the
subject carefully, and who had produced a reasonable if somewhat defective
theory based on a rather shallow exegesis, in which the words of our Lord,
“This is My Body,” were declared to mean nothing but “This signifies My
Body.” Luther, always disposed to think harshly of anything that came from
Carlstadt, inclined to exaggerate his influence with the German Protestant
democracy, believing with his whole heart that in the Sacrament of the Holy
Supper the elements Bread and Wine were more than the bare signs of the
Body and Blood of the Lord, was vehemently moved to find such views
concerning a central doctrine of Christianity spreading through his beloved
Germany. He never paused to ask whether the opinions he saw adopted with
eagerness in most of the imperial cities were really different from those of
Carlstadt (for that is one of the sad facts in this deplorable controversy). He
simply denounced them, and stormed against Zwingli, whose name was
spread abroad as their author and propagator. Nürnberg was almost the only
great city that remained faithful to him. It was the only city also which was
governed by the ancient patriciate, and in which the democracy had little or
no power. When van Hoen and Karl Stadt in the Netherlands, Hedio at
Mainz, Conrad Sam at Ulm, when the preachers of Augsburg, Strassburg,
Frankfurt, Reutlingen, and other cities accepted and taught Zwingli’s
doctrine of the Eucharist, Luther and his immediate circle saw a great deal
more than a simple division in doctrine. It was something more than the
meaning of the Holy Supper or the exegesis of a difficult text which rent
Protestantism in two, and made Luther and Zwingli appear as the leaders of
opposing parties in a movement where union was a supreme necessity after
the decision at Speyer in 1529. The theological question was complicated
by social and political ideas, which, if not acknowledged openly, were at
least in the minds of the leaders who took sides in the dispute. On the one
side were men whom Luther held to be in part responsible for the Peasants’
War, who were the acknowledged leaders of that democracy which he had
learnt to distrust if not to fear, who still wished to link the Reformation to
vast political schemes, all of which tended to weaken the imperial power by
means of French and other alliances, and who only added to their other

iniquities a theological theory which, he honestly believed, would take
away from believers their comforting assurance of union with their Lord in
the Sacrament of the Holy Supper.
The real theological difference after all did not amount to so much as is
generally said. Zwingli’s doctrine of the Holy Supper was not the crude
theory of Carlstadt; and Luther might have seen this if he had only fairly
examined it. The opposed views were, in fact, complementary, and the
pronounced ideas of each were implicitly, though not expressly, held by the
other. Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two different points
of view, and in debate they neither understood nor were exactly facing each
other.
The whole Christian Church, during all the centuries, has found three great
ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, and all three have
express reference to the death of the Saviour on the Cross for His people.
The thoughts are Proclamation, Commemoration, and Participation or
Communion. In the Supper, believers proclaim the death and what it means;
they commemorate the Sacrifice; and they partake in or have communion
with the crucified Christ, who is also the Risen Saviour. The mediæval
Church had insisted that this sacramental union with Christ was in the
hands of the priesthood to give or to withhold. Duly ordained priests, and
they alone, could bring the worshippers into such a relation with Christ as
would make the Sacramental participation a possible thing: and out of this
claim had grown the mediæval theory of Transubstantiation. It had also
divided the Sacrament of the Supper into two distinct rites (the phrase is not
too strong)—the Mass and the Eucharist—the one connecting itself
instinctively with the commemoration and the other with the participation.
Protestants united in denying the special priestly miracle needed to bring
Christ and His people together in the Sacrament; but it is easy to see that
they might approach the subject by the two separate paths of Mass or
Eucharist. Zwingli took the one road and Luther happened on the other.
Zwingli believed that the mediæval Church had displaced the scriptural
thought of commemoration, and put the non-scriptural idea of repetition in
its place. For the mediæval priest claimed that in virtue of the miraculous
power given in ordination, he could really change the bread and wine into
the actual physical Body of Jesus, and, when this was done, that he could

reproduce over again the agony of the Cross by crushing it with his teeth.
This idea seemed to Zwingli to be utterly profane; it dishonoured the One
great Sacrifice; it was unscriptural; it depended on a priestly gift of working
a miracle which did not exist. Then he believed that the sixth chapter of St.
John’s Gospel forbade all thought that spiritual benefits could come from a
mere partaking with the mouth. It was the atonement worked out by Christ’s
death that was appropriated and commemorated in the Holy Supper; and the
atonement is always received by faith. Thus the two principal thoughts in
the theory of Zwingli are, that the mediæval doctrine must be purified by
changing the idea of repetition of the death of Christ for commemoration of
that death, and the thought of manducating with the teeth for that of faith
which is the faculty by which spiritual benefits are received. But Zwingli
believed that a living faith always brought with it the presence of Christ, for
there can be no true faith without actual spiritual contact with the Saviour.
Therefore Zwingli held that there was a Real Presence of Christ in the Holy
Supper; but a spiritual presence brought by the faith of the believing
communicant and not by the elements of Bread and Wine, which were only
the signs representing a Body which was corporeally absent. The defect of
this theory is that it does not make the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament
in any way depend on the ordinance; there is no sacramental presence other
than what there is in any act of faith. It was not until Zwingli had elaborated
his theory that he sought for and found an explanation of the words of our
Lord, and taught that This is My Body, must mean This signifies My Body.
His theory was entirely different from that of Carlstadt, with which Luther
always identified it.
Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled him
in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he
believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He
protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they were
the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first preached on the
subject (1519) it was to demand the “cup” for the laity, and he makes use of
an expression in his sermon which reveals how his thoughts were tending.
He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper “the communicant is so
united to Christ and His saints, that Christ’s life and sufferings and the lives
and sufferings of the saints become his.” No one held more strongly than
Luther that the Atonement was made by our Lord, and by Him alone.
Therefore he cannot be thinking of the Atonement when he speaks of union

with the lives and the sufferings of the saints. He believes that the main
thing in the Sacrament is that it gives such a companionship with Jesus as
His disciples and saints have had. There was, of course, a reference to the
death of Christ and to the Atonement, for apart from that death no
companionship is possible; but the reference is indirect, and through the
thought of the fellowship. In the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples
might have touched Him when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints
touch Him now. This reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in
the Sacrament of the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord,
and that the primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant
into contact with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther
thought a presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the
Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with it.
But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of the
death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the reference
to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther attains
indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which Zwingli
reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the need of a
priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into immediate
connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a scholastic
theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be present in
Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in such a way
that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body, or it may be
present occupying the same space with another body. The Glorified Body of
Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so when our Lord after His
Resurrection appeared suddenly among His disciples in a room when the
doors were shut; for then at some moment of time it must have occupied the
same space as a portion of the walls or of the door. Christ’s glorified Body
can therefore be naturally in the elements without any special miracle, for it
is ubiquitous. It is in the table at which I write, said Luther; in the stone
which I hurl through the air. It is in the elements in the Holy Supper in a
perfectly natural way, and needs no priestly miracle to bring it there. This
natural presence of the Body of Christ in the elements in the Supper is
changed into a Sacramental Presence by the promise of God, which is
attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the Holy Supper.
These were the two theories which ostensibly divided the Protestants in
1529 into two parties, the one of which was led by Zwingli and the other by

Luther. They were not so antagonistic that they could not be reconciled.
Each theologian held implicitly what the other declared explicitly. Zwingli
placed the relation to the Death of Christ in the foreground, but implicitly
admitted the relation to the Risen Christ—going back to the view held in
the Early Church. Luther put fellowship with the Risen Christ in the
foreground, but admitted the reference to the Crucified Christ—accepting
the mediæval way of looking at the matter. The one had recourse to a very
shallow exegesis to help him, and the other to a scholastic theory of space;
and naturally, but unfortunately, when controversy arose, the disputant
attacked the weakest part of his opponent’s theory—Luther, Zwingli’s
exegesis; and Zwingli, Luther’s scholastic theory of spatial presence.
The attempt to bring about an understanding between Luther and Zwingli,
made by Philip of Hesse, the confidant of Zwingli, and in sympathy with
the Swiss Reformer’s schemes of political combination, has already been
mentioned, and its failure related.[39] It need not be discussed again. But for
the history of the Reformation in Switzerland it is necessary to say
something about the further progress of this Sacramental controversy.
Calvin gradually won over the Swiss Protestants to his views; and his
theory, which at one time seemed about to unite the divided Protestants,
must be alluded to.
Calvin began his study of the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper
independently of both Luther and Zwingli. His position as the theologian of
Switzerland, and his friendship with his colleague William Farel, who was a
Zwinglian, made him adapt his theory to Zwinglian language; but he
borrowed nothing from the Reformer of Zurich. He was quite willing to
accept Zwingli’s exegesis so far as the words went; but he gave another and
altogether different meaning to Zwingli’s phrase, This signifies My Body.
He was willing to call the “elements” signs of the Body and Blood of the
Lord; but while Zwingli called them signs which represent (signa
representativa) what was absent, Calvin insisted on calling them signs
which exhibit (signa exhibitiva) what was present—a distinction which is
continually forgotten in describing his relation to the theories of Zwingli,
and one which enabled him to convince Luther that he held that there was a
Real Presence of Christ’s Body in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. To
describe minutely Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Supper would require more
space than can be given here, and a brief statement of the central thoughts is

alone possible. His aim in common with all the Reformers was to construct
a doctrine of the Sacrament of the Supper which would be at once
scriptural, free from superstition and from the crass materialist associations
which had gathered round the theory of transubstantiation, and which would
clearly conserve the great Reformation proclamation of the spiritual
priesthood of all believers. He went back to the mediæval idea of
transubstantiation, and asked whether it gave a true conception of what was
meant by substance. He decided that it did not, and believed that the root
thought in substance was not dimensions in space, but power. The
substance of a body consists in its power, active and passive, and the
presence of the substance of anything consists in the immediate application
of that power.[40] When Luther and Zwingli had spoken of the substance of
the Body of Christ, they had always in their mind the thought of something
extended in space; and the one affirmed while the other denied that this
Body of Christ, something extended in space, could be and was present in
the Sacrament of the Supper. Calvin’s conception of substance enabled him
to say that wherever anything acts there it is. He denied the crude
“substantial” presence which Luther insisted on; and in this he sided with
Zwingli. But he affirmed a real because active presence, and in this he sided
with Luther.
Calvin’s view had been accepted definitely by Melanchthon, and somewhat
indefinitely by Luther. The imperial cities, led by Strassburg, which was
under the influence of Bucer, who had thought out for himself a doctrine
not unlike that of Calvin, had been included in the Wittenberg Concord
(May 1536); but Luther would have nothing to do with the Swiss. As it was
vain to hope that Switzerland would be included in any Lutheran alliance,
Calvin set himself to produce dogmatic harmony in Switzerland. In
conjunction with Bullinger, Zwingli’s son-in-law and successor in Zurich,
he drafted the Consensus of Zurich (Consensus Tigurinus) in 1549.[41] The
document is Calvinist in theology and largely Zwinglian in language. It was
accepted with some difficulty in Basel and in Bern, and heartily in Biel,
Schaffhausen, Mühlhausen, and St. Gallen. It ended dogmatic disputes in
Protestant Switzerland, which was thus united under the one creed.
This does not mean any increase of Protestantism within Switzerland. The
Romanist cantons drew more closely together. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo of
Milan took a deep interest in the Counter-Reformation in Switzerland. He

introduced the Jesuits into Luzern and the Forest cantons, and after his
death these cantons formed a league which included Luzern, Uri, Schwyz,
Zug, Unterwalden, Freiburg, and Solothurn (1586). This League (the
Borromean League) pledged its members to maintain the Roman Catholic
faith. The lines of demarcation between Protestant and Romanist cantons in
Switzerland practically survive to the present day.

CHAPTER III.

THE REFORMATION IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.[42]

§ 1. Geneva.

Geneva, which was to be the citadel of the Reformed faith in Europe, had a
history which prepared it for the part it was destined to play.
The ancient constitution of the town, solemnly promulgated in 1387,
recognised three different authorities within its walls: the Bishop, who was
the sovereign or “Prince” of the city; the Count, who had possession of the
citadel; and the Free Burghers. The first act of the Bishop on his nomination
was to go to the Church of St. Peter and swear on the Missal that he would
maintain the civic rights. The House of Savoy had succeeded to the
countship of Geneva, and they were represented within the town by a
viceroy, who was called the Count or Vidomne. He was the supreme
justiciary. The citizens were democratically organised. They met once a
year in a recognised civic assembly to elect four Syndics to be their rulers
and representatives. It was the Syndics who in their official capacity heard
the oaths of the Bishop and of the Vidomne to uphold the rights and
privileges of the town. They kept order within the walls from sunrise to
sunset.
These three separate authorities were frequently in conflict, and in the
triangular duel the citizens and the Bishop were generally in alliance against
the House of Savoy and its viceroy. The consequence was that few
mediæval cities under ecclesiastical rule were more loyal than Geneva was
to its Bishop, so long as he respected the people’s rights and stood by them
against their feudal lords when they attempted oppression.
In the years succeeding 1444 the hereditary loyalty to their bishops had to
stand severe tests. Count Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, one of the most
remarkable men of the fifteenth century,—he ascended the papal throne and
resigned the Pontificate to become a hermit,—used his pontifical power to

possess himself of the bishopric. From that date onwards the Bishop of
Geneva was almost always a member of the House of Savoy, and the rights
of the citizens were for the most part disregarded. The bishopric became an
appanage of Savoy, and boys (one of ten years of age, another of seventeen)
and bastards ruled from the episcopal chair.
After long endurance a party formed itself among the townspeople vowed
to restore the old rights of the city. They called themselves, or were named
by others, the Eidguenots (Eidgenossen); while the partisans of the Bishop
and of the House of Savoy were termed Mamelukes, because, it was said,
they had forsaken Christianity.
In their difficulties the Genevans turned to the Swiss cantons nearest them
and asked to be allied with Freiburg and Bern. Freiburg consented, and an
alliance was made in 1519; but Bern, an aristocratic republic, was unwilling
to meddle in the struggle of a democracy in a town outside the Swiss
Confederacy. The citizens of Bern, more sympathetic than their rulers,
compelled them to make alliance with Geneva in 1526,—very half-
heartedly on the part of the Bernese Council.
The Swiss cantons, Bern especially, could not in their own interest see the
patriotic party in Geneva wholly crushed, and the “gate of Western
Switzerland” left completely in possession of the House of Savoy.
Therefore, when the Bishop assembled an army for the purpose of
effectually crushing all opposition within the town, Bern and Freiburg
collected their forces and routed the troops of Savoy. But the allies, instead
of using to the full the advantage they had gained, were content with a
compromise by which the Bishop remained the lord of Geneva, while the
rights of the Vidomne were greatly curtailed, and the privileges of the
townsmen were to be respected (Oct. 19th, 1530).
From this date onwards Geneva was governed by what was called le Petit
Conseil, and was generally spoken of as the Council; then a Council of Two
Hundred, framed on the model of those of Freiburg and Bern; lastly, by the
Conseil General, or assembly of the citizens. All important transactions
were first submitted to and deliberated on by the Petit Conseil, which
handed them on with their opinion of what ought to be done to the Council
of the Two Hundred. No change of situation—for example, the adoption of

the Reformation—was finally adopted until submitted to the General
Council of all the burghers.
It is possible that had there seemed to be any immediate prospects that
Geneva would join the Reformation, Bern would have aided the patriots
more effectually. Bern was the great Protestant Power in Western
Switzerland. Its uniform policy, since 1528, had been to constitute itself the
protector of towns and districts where a majority of the inhabitants were
anxious to take the side of the Reformation and were hindered by their
overlords. It made alliances with the towns in the territories of the Bishop
of Basel, and enabled them to assert their independence. In May (23rd)
1532 it warned the Duke of Savoy that if he thought of persecuting the
inhabitants of Payerne because of their religion, it would make their cause
its own, and declared that its alliance with the town was much more ancient
than any existing between Bern and the Duke.[43] But the case of Geneva
was different. Signs, indeed, were not lacking that many of the people were
inclined to the Reformation.[44] It is more than probable that some of the
members of the Councils were longing for a religious reform. But however
much in earnest the reformers might be, they were in a minority, and it was
no part of the policy of Bern to interfere without due call in the internal
administration of the city; still less to see the rise of a strong and
independent Roman Catholic city-republic on its own western border.
Suddenly, in the middle of 1532, Geneva was thrown into a state of violent
religious commotion. Pope Clement VII. had published an Indulgence
within the city on the usual conditions. On the morning of June 9th, the
citizens found posted up on all the doors of the churches great printed
placards, announcing that “plenary pardon would be granted to every one
for all their sins on the one condition of repentance, and a living faith in the
promises of Jesus Christ.” The city was moved to its depths. Priests rushed
to tear the placards down. “Lutherans” interfered. Tumults ensued; and one
of the canons of the cathedral, Pierre Werly, was wounded in the arm.[45]
The Romanists, both inside and outside the town, were inclined to believe
that the affair meant more than it really did. Freiburg had been very
suspicious of the influence of the great Protestant canton of Bern, perhaps
not without reason. In March (7th) 1532, the deputies of Geneva had been
blamed by the inhabitants of Freiburg for being inclined to Lutheranism,

and it is more than likely that the Evangelicals of Geneva had some private
dealings with the Council of Bern, and had been told that the times were not
ripe for any open action on the part of the Protestant canton. The affair of
the placards, witnessing as it did the increased strength of the Evangelical
party, reawakened suspicions and intensified alarms. A deputy from
Freiburg appeared before the Council of Geneva, complaining of the
placards,[46] and of the distribution of heretical literature in the city of
Geneva (June 24th). The Papal Nuncio wrote from Chambéry (July 8th),
asking if it were true, as was publicly reported, that the Lutheran heresy was
openly professed and taught in the houses, churches, and even in the
schools of Geneva.[47] The letter of the Nuncio was dismissed with a
careless answer; but Freiburg had to be contented. Two extracts from the
Register of the Council quoted by Herminjard show their anxiety to satisfy
Freiburg and yet bear evidence of a very moderate zeal for the Romanist
religion. They decided (June 29th) that no schoolmaster was to be allowed
to preach in the town unless specially licensed by the vicar or the Syndics;
and (June 30th) they resolved to request the vicar to see that the Gospel and
the Epistle of the day were read “truthfully without being mixed up with
fables and other inventions of men”; they added that they meant to live as
their fathers, without any innovations.[48]
The excitement had not died down when Farel arrived in the city in the
autumn of 1532. He preached quietly in houses; but his coming was known,
and led to some tumults. He and his companions, Saunier and Olivétan,
were seized and sent out of the city. The Reformation had begun, and, in
spite of many hindrances, was destined to be successful.

§ 2. The Reformation in Western Switzerland.

The conversion of Geneva to the Reformed faith was the crown of a work
which had been promoted by the canton of Bern ever since its Council had
decided, in 1528, to adopt the Reformation. Bern itself belonged to
German-speaking Switzerland, but it had extensive possessions in the
French-speaking districts. It was the only State strong enough to confront
the Dukes of Savoy, and was looked upon as a natural protector against that
House and other feudal principalities. Its position may be seen in its
relations to the Pays de Vaud. The Pays de Vaud consisted of a confederacy

of towns and small feudal estates owning fealty to the House of Savoy. The
nobles, the towns, and in some instances the clergy, sent deputies to a Diet
which met at Moudon under the presidency of the “governor and bailli de
Vaud,” who represented the Duke of Savoy. A large portion of the country
had broken away from Savoy at different periods during the fifteenth
century. Lausanne and eight other smaller towns and districts formed the
patrimony of the Prince-Bishop of Lausanne. The cantons of Freiburg and
Bern ruled jointly over Orbe, Grandson, and Morat. Bern had become the
sole ruler over what were called the four commanderies of Aigle, Ormonts,
Ollon, and Bex. These four commanderies were outlying portions of Bern,
and were entirely under the rule of its Council. When Bern had accepted the
Reformation, it naturally wished its dependencies to follow its example; and
its policy was always directed to induce other portions of the Pays de Vaud
to become Protestant also. Farel, the Apostle of French-speaking
Switzerland, might almost be called an agent of the Council of Bern.
Its method of work may be best seen by taking the examples of Aigle and
Lausanne, the one its own possession and the other belonging to the Prince-
Bishop, who was its political ruler.
William Farel, once a member of the “group of Meaux,” whom we have
already seen active at the Disputation in Bern in the beginning of 1528, had
settled at Aigle in 1526, probably by the middle of November.[49] He did so,
he says in his memoir to the Council of Bern—

“With the intention of opening a school to instruct the youth in virtue
and learning, and in order to procure for myself the necessities of life.
Received at once with brotherly good-will by some of the burghers of
the place, I was asked by them to preach the Word of God before the
Governor, who was then at Bern, had returned. I acceded to their
request. But as soon as the Governor returned I asked his permission to
keep the school, and by acquaintances also asked him to permit me to
preach. The Governor acceded to their request, but on condition that I
preached nothing but the pure simple clear Word of God according to
the Old and New Testament, without any addition contrary to the
Word, and without attacking the Holy Sacraments.... I promised to
conform myself to the will of the Governor, and declared myself ready
to submit to any punishment he pleased to inflict upon me if I

disobeyed his orders or acted in any way recognised to be contrary to
the Word of God.”[50]

This was the beginning of a work which gradually spread over French-
speaking Switzerland.
The Bishop of Sion, within whose diocese Aigle was situated, published an
order forbidding all wandering preachers who had not his episcopal licence
from preaching within the confines of his diocese; and this appears to have
been used against Farel. Some representation must have been made to the
Council of Bern, who indignantly declared that no one was permitted to
publish citations, excommunications, interdicts, ne autres fanfares within
their territories; but at the same time ordered Farel to cease preaching,
because he had never been ordained a priest (February 22nd, 1527).[51] The
interdict did not last very long; for a minute of Council (March 8th) says,
“Farel is permitted to preach at Aigle until the Coadjutor sends another
capable priest.”[52] Troubles arose from priests and monks, but upon the
whole the Council of Bern supported him; and Haller and others wrote from
Bern privately, beseeching him to persevere.[53] He remained, and the
number of those who accepted the Evangelical faith under his ministry
increased gradually until they appear to have been the majority of the
people.[54] He confessed himself that what hindered him most was his
denunciation of the prevailing immoralities. At the Disputation in Bern,
Farel was recognised to be one of the ablest theologians present, and to
have contributed in no small degree to the success of the conference. The
Council of Bern saw in him the instrument best fitted for the evangelisation
of their French-speaking population. He returned to Aigle under the
protection of the Council, who sent a herald with him to ensure that he
should be treated with all respect, and gave him besides an “open letter,”
ordering their officials to render him all assistance everywhere within their
four commanderies.[55] He was recognised to be the evangelist of the
Council of Bern. This did not prevent occasional disturbances, riots
promoted by priests and monks, who set the bells a-ringing to drown the
preacher’s voice, and sometimes procured men to beat drums at the doors of
the churches in which he was preaching. His success, however, was so
great, that when the commissioners of Bern visited their four commanderies
they found that three of them were ready by a majority of votes to adopt the

Reformation (March 2nd, 1528). The adoption of the Reformation was
signified by the removal of altars and images, and by the abolition of the
Mass.
In the parishes where a majority of the people declared for the Reformation,
the Council of Bern issued instructions about the order of public worship
and other ecclesiastical rites. Thus we find them intimating to their
Governor at Aigle that they expected the people to observe the same form
of Baptism, of the Table of the Lord, and of the celebration of marriage, as
was in use at Bern (April 25th, 1528).[56] The Bern Liturgy, obligatory in all
the German-speaking districts of the canton, was not imposed on the
Romance Churches until 1552. Then, in July (1528), the Governor is
informed that—

“My Lords have resolved to allow to the preachers Farel and Simon
‘pour leur prébende’ two hundred florins of Savoy annually, and a
house with a court, and a kitchen garden. But if they prefer to have the
old revenues of the parish cures ... my Lords are willing. If, on the
contrary, they take the two hundred florins, you are to sell the
ecclesiastical goods, and you are to collect the hundredths and the
tithes, and out of all you are to pay the two hundred florins
annually.”[57]

The pastors preferred to take the place of the Romanist incumbents, and
there is accordingly another minute sent to the Castellan, syndic, and
parishioners of Aigle, ordering Farel to be placed in possession of the
ecclesiastical possessions of the parish, “seeing that it is reasonable that the
pastor should have his portion of the fruits of the sheep.”[58]
The history of Aigle was repeated over and over again in other parts of
western Switzerland. In the bailiwicks which Bern and Freiburg ruled
jointly, Bern insisted on freedom of preaching, and on the right of the
people to choose whether they would remain Romanists or become
Protestants. Commissioners from the two cantons presided when the votes
were given.
Farel was too valuable to be left as pastor of a small district like Aigle. We
find him making wide preaching tours, always protected by Bern when
protection was possible. It was the rooted belief of the Protestants that a

public Disputation on matters of religion in presence of the people, the
speakers using the language understood by the crowd, always resulted in
spreading the Reformation; and Bern continually tried to get such
conferences in towns where the authorities were Romanist. Their first
interference in the ecclesiastical affairs of Lausanne was of this kind. It
seems that some of the priests of Lausanne had accused Farel of being a
heretic; whereupon the Council of Bern demanded that Farel should be
heard before the Bishop of Lausanne’s tribunal, in order to prove that he
was no heretic. The claim led to a long correspondence. The Bishop
continually refused; while the Council and citizens seemed inclined to grant
the request. Farel could not get a hearing before the episcopal tribunal, but
he visited the town, and on the second occasion was permitted by the
Council to preach to the people. This occurred again and again; and the
result was that the town became Protestant and disowned the authority of
the Bishop. Bern assisted the inhabitants to drive the Bishop away, and to
become a free municipality and Protestant.
Gradually Farel had become the leader of an organised band of missioners,
who devoted themselves to the evangelisation of western or French-
speaking Switzerland.[59] They had been carefully selected—young men for
the most part well educated, of unbounded courage, willing to face all the
risks of their dangerous work, daunted by no threat or peril, taking their
lives in their hand. They were the forerunners of the young preachers,
teachers, and colporteurs whom Calvin trained later in Geneva and sent
forth by the hundred to evangelise France and the Low Countries. They
were all picked men. No one was admitted to the little band without being
well warned of the hazardous work before him, and some who were ready
to take all the risks were rejected because the leader was not sure that they
had the necessary powers of endurance.[60] These preachers were under the
protection of the canton of Bern, whose authorities were resolute to
maintain the freedom to preach the Word of God; but they continually went
where the Bernese had no power to assist them; nor could the protection of
that powerful canton aid them in sudden emergencies when bitter Romanist
partisans, infuriated by the invectives with which the preachers lashed the
abuses of the Roman religion, or wrathful at their very presence, stirred up
the mob against them. When their correspondence and that of their
opponents—a correspondence collected and carefully edited by M.

Herminjard—is read, it can be seen that they could always count on a
certain amount of sympathy from the people of the towns and villages
where they preached, but that the authorities were for the most part hostile.
If Bern insisted on their protection, Freiburg was as active in opposing
them, and lost no opportunity of urging the local authorities to harass them
in every way, to silence their preaching, and if possible to expel them from
their territories.
Such men had the defects of their qualities. Their zeal often outran their
discretion. When Farel and Froment, the most daring and devoted of his
band, were preaching at a village in the vale of Villingen, a priest began to
chant the Mass beside them. As the priest elevated the Host, Froment seized
it and, turning towards the people, said, “This is not the God to adore; He is
in the Heaven in the glory of the Father, not in the hands of the priests as
you believe, and as they teach.” There was a riot, of course, but the
preachers escaped. Next day, however, as they were passing a solitary place,
they were assailed by a crowd of men and women, stoned and beaten with
clubs, then hurried away to a neighbouring castle whose chatelaine had
instigated the attack. There they were thrust violently into the chapel, and
the crowd tried to make Farel prostrate himself before an image of the
Blessed Virgin. He resisted, admonishing them to adore the one God in
spirit and in truth, not dumb images without sense or power. The crowd beat
him to the effusion of blood, and the two preachers were dragged to a vault,
where they were imprisoned until rescued by the authorities of Neuchâtel.
[61]

These preachers were all Frenchmen or French-Swiss. They had the hot
Celtic blood in their veins, and their hearers were their kith and kin—
prompt to act, impetuous when their passions were stirred. Scenes occurred
at their preaching which we seldom hear of among slower Germans, who
generally waited until their authorities led. In western Switzerland the
audiences were eager to get rid of the idolatries denounced. At Grandson,
the people rushed to the church of the Cordeliers, and tore down the altars
and images, while the crosses, altars, and images of the parish church were
also destroyed.[62] Similar tumults took place at Orbe; and the authorities at
Bern, who desired to see liberty for both Protestants and Romanists, had
occasion to rebuke the zealous preachers.

But the dangers which the missioners ran were not always of their own
provoking. Sometimes a crowd of women invaded the churches in which
they preached, interrupted the services with shoutings, hustled and beat the
preachers; sometimes when they addressed the people in the market-place
the preachers and their audience were assailed with showers of stones;
sometimes Farel and his companions were laid wait for and maltreated.[63]
M. de Watteville, sent down by the authorities of Bern to report on
disturbances, wrote to the Council of Bern that the faces of the preachers
were so torn that it looked as if they had been fighting with cats, and that on
one occasion the alarm-bell had been sounded against them, as was the
custom for a wolf-hunt.[64]
No dangers daunted the missioners, and soon the whole of the outlying
districts of Bern, Neuchâtel, Soleure, and other French-speaking portions of
Switzerland declared for the Reformation. The cantonal authorities
frequently sent down commissioners to ascertain the wishes of the people;
and when the majority of the inhabitants voted for the Evangelical religion,
the church, parsonage, and stipend were given to a Protestant pastor. Many
of Farel’s missioners were temporarily settled in these village churches; but
they were for the most part better fitted for pioneer work than for a settled
pastorate. In January (9-14th) 1532, a synod of these Protestant pastors was
held at Bern to deliberate on some uniform ways of exercising their
ministry to prevent disorders arising from individual caprice. Two hundred
and thirty ministers were present, and Bucer was brought from Strassburg to
give them guidance. His advice was greatly appreciated and followed by the
delegates of the churches and the Council of Bern. The Synod in the end
issued an elaborate ordinance, which included a lengthy exposition of
doctrine.[65]

§ 3. Farel in Geneva.

It was after this consolidation of the Reformation in Bern and its outlying
provinces that Farel found himself free to turn his attention to Geneva. He
had evidently been thinking for months about the possibility of evangelising
the town. He had little fear of the people themselves, and he wrote to
Zwingli (Oct. 1st, 1531) that were it not for the dread of Freiburg, he
believed that the Genevese would welcome the Gospel.[66] The affair of the
“placards” seems to have decided him to begin his mission in the city.
When he was driven out he was far from abandoning the enterprise. He
turned to Froment, his most trusted assistant, and sent him into Geneva.
Antoine Froment, who has the honour along with Farel of being the
Reformer of Geneva, was born at Tries, near Grenoble, about 1510. He was
therefore, like Farel, a native of Dauphiné. Like him, also, he had gone to
Paris for his education, and had become acquainted with Lefèvre, who
seems to have introduced him to Marguerite d’Angoulême, the Queen of
Navarre,[67] as he received from her a prebend in a canonry on one of her
estates. How he came to Switzerland is unknown. Once there and
introduced to Farel, he became his most daring and enthusiastic disciple,
and Farel prized him above all the others. They were Paul and Timothy. It
was natural that Farel should entrust him with the difficult and dangerous
task of preaching the Gospel in Geneva.
Farel’s seizure and expulsion made it necessary to proceed with caution.
Froment entered Geneva (Nov. 3rd, 1532), and began his work by
intimating by public advertisement (placard) that he was ready to teach any
one who wished to learn to read and write the French language, and that he
would charge no fees if his pupils were not able to profit by his instructions.
Scholars came.[68] He managed to mingle Evangelical instruction with his
lessons,—“every day one or two sermons from the Holy Scripture,” he
says,—and soon made many converts, especially among the wives of
influential citizens. Towards the end of 1532, the monks of one of the
convents in Geneva had brought to the city a Dominican, Christopher
Bocquet, to be their Advent preacher. His sermons seem to have been
largely Evangelical, and had the effect of inducing many of the citizens to
attend Froment’s discourses in the hall where he kept his school.[69] This

provoked threats on the part of the Romanists, and strongly worded
sermons from the priests and Romanist orators. One citizen, convicted of
having spoken disrespectfully of the Mass, was banished, and forbidden to
return on pain of death. On this the Evangelicals of the town appealed to
Bern. Their letter was promptly answered by a demand on the part of the
Council of that canton that the Evangelicals must be left in peace, and if
attacked publicly must be allowed to answer in as public a fashion.[70]
When their letter was read in the Council of Geneva, it provoked some
protests from the more ardently Romanist members, and the priests stirred
up part of the population to riotous proceedings, in which the lives of the
Evangelicals were threatened. The Syndics and Council had difficulty in
preventing conflicts in the streets. They published a decree (March 30th,
1533), in which they practically proclaimed liberty of conscience, but
forbade all insulting expressions, all attacks on the Sacraments or on the
ecclesiastical fasts and ceremonies, and again ordered preachers to say
nothing which could not be proved from Holy Scripture.[71]
The numbers of the Evangelicals increased daily; they became bolder, and
on the 10th of April they met in a garden, under the presidency of Guérin
Muète, a hosier, for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This became
known to the Romanists, and there was a renewal of the threats against the
Evangelicals, which came to a head in the riot of the 5th of May—a riot
which had important consequences.[72] It seems that while several citizens,
known to belong to the Evangelical party, were walking in the square before
the Cathedral of St. Peter, they were attacked by a band of armed priests,
and three of them were severely wounded. The leader of the band, a
turbulent priest named Pierre Werly, who belonged to an old family of
Freiburg, and was a canon in the cathedral, followed by five or six others,
rushed down to the broad street Molard, with loud shouts. Werly was armed
with one of the huge Swiss swords. He and his companions attacked the
Evangelicals; there was a sharp, short fight; several persons were wounded
severely, and Werly, “the captain of the priests,” was slain.[73] The affair
made a great noise. The Romanists at once proclaimed Werly a martyr, and
honoured him with a pompous funeral. Freiburg insisted that all the
Evangelicals who happened to be in the Molard should be arrested; and it
was said that preparations were being made for a massacre of all the

followers of the Reformation. In their extremity they again appealed to
Bern, whose authorities again interfered for their protection.
During these troublesome times the position of the Council of Geneva was
one of great difficulty. The Prince-Bishop of Geneva, Pierre de la Baume,
was still nominally sovereign, secular as well as ecclesiastical ruler. His
secular powers had been greatly curtailed, how much it is difficult to say,
but certainly to the extent that the criminal administration of the city and the
territory subject to it was in the hands of the Council and Syndics. Freiburg,
one of the two protecting cantons, insisted that all the ecclesiastical
authority was still in the hands of the Bishop, to be administered in his
absence by his vicar.[74] The Councils, although they had passed decrees
(June 30th, 1532, and March 30th, 1533) which had distinctly to do with
ecclesiastical matters, acknowledged for the most part that the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction did not belong to them. But the whole of the inhabitants were
not contented with this diminution of the episcopal authority. Turbulent
priests and the yet more violent canons,[75] the great body of monks and
nuns, wished, and intrigued for the restoration of the rule of the Bishop and
of the House of Savoy. The beginnings of a movement for Reformation had
increased the difficulties of the Council; it brought a third party into the
town. The Evangelicals were all strongly opposed to the rule of the Bishop
and Savoy, and they were fast growing in strength; a powerful minority of
Roman Catholics were no less strongly in favour of a return to the old
condition. The majority of the Roman Catholic citizens, opposed to the
Bishop as a secular ruler, had no desire for the triumph of the Reformation.
As time went on, it was seen that these moderate Romanists had to choose
between a return of the old disorderly rule of the Bishop, or to acquiesce in
the ecclesiastical as well as the secular superiority of the Council, pressed
by the Protestant canton of Bern. The Savoyard party evidently believed
that their hatred of the Reformation would be stronger than their dislike to
the Savoyard and episcopal rule—a mistaken belief, as events were to show.
The policy of Bern, wherever its influence prevailed in western
Switzerland, was exerted to secure toleration for all Evangelicals, and to
procure, if possible, a public discussion on matters of religion between the
Romanists and leading Reformers. They pressed this over and over again on
their allies of Geneva. As early as April 1533, they had insisted that a monk
who had offered to refute Farel should be kept to his word, and that the

Council of Geneva should arrange for a Public Disputation.[76] Towards the
close of the year an event occurred which gave them a pretext for decisive
interference.
Guy Furbiti, a renowned Roman Catholic preacher, a learned theologian, a
doctor of the Sorbonne, had been brought to Geneva to be Advent preacher.
He used the occasion to denounce vigorously the doctrines of the
Evangelicals, supporting his statements, as he afterwards confessed, not
from Scripture, but from the Decretals and from the writings of Thomas
Aquinas. He ended his sermon (Dec. 2nd) with the words: “Where are those
fine preachers of the fireside, who say the opposite? If they showed
themselves here one could speak to them. Ha! ha! they are well to hide
themselves in corners to deceive poor women and others who know
nothing.”
After the sermon, either in church or in the square before the cathedral,
Froment cried to the crowd, “Hear me! I am ready to give my life, and my
body to be burned, to maintain that what that man has said is nothing but
falsehood and the words of Antichrist.” There was a great commotion.
Some shouted, “To the fire with him! to the fire!” and tried to seize him.
The chronicler nun, Jeanne de Jussie, proud of her sex, relates that “les
femmes comme enragées sortirent après, de grande furie, luy jettant force
pierres.”[77] He escaped from them. But Alexandre Canus was banished,
and forbidden to return under pain of death; and Froment was hunted from
house to house, until he found a hiding-place in a hay-loft. Furbiti had
permitted himself to attack with strong invectives the authorities of Bern,
and the Evangelicals of Geneva in their appeal for protection sent extracts
from the sermons.[78] Bern had at last the opportunity for which its Council
had long waited.
They wrote a dignified letter (Dec. 17th, 1533) to the Council of Geneva, in
which they complained that the Genevese, their allies, had hitherto paid
little attention to their requests for a favourable treatment of the
Evangelicals; that they had expelled from the town “nostre serviteur maistre
Guillaume Farel”; not content with that, they had recently misused their
“servants” Froment and Alexandre for protesting against the sermons of a
Jacobin monk (Furbiti) who “preached only lies, errors, and blasphemies
against God, the faith, and ourselves, wounding our honour, calling us Jews,

Turks, and dogs”; that the banishment of Alexandre and the hunting of
Froment touched them (the Council of Bern), and that they would not suffer
it. They demanded the immediate arrest of the “caffard”[79] (Furbiti); and
they said they were about to send an embassy to Geneva to vindicate
publicly the honour of God and their own.[80]
As the Council of Bern meant to enforce a Public Disputation, they sent
Farel to Geneva. He reached the city on the evening of December 20th.
The letter was read to the Council of Geneva upon Dec. 21st, and they at
once gave orders to the vicar to prevent Furbiti leaving the town. But the
vicar, who had resolved to try his strength against Bern, refused, and
actually published two mandates (Dec. 31st, 1533, and Jan. 1st, 1534)
denouncing the Genevese Syndics, forbidding any of the citizens to read the
Holy Scriptures, and ordering all copies of translations of the Bible,
whether in German or in French, to be seized and burnt.[81] The dispute
between Syndics and vicar was signalised by riots promoted by the extreme
Romanist party. The Council, anxious not to proceed to extremities,
contented themselves with placing a guard to watch Furbiti; and the monk
was attended continually, even when he went to and from the church, by a
guard of three halberdiers.
The Bernese embassy arrived on the 4th of January, and had prolonged
audience of the Council of Geneva on the 5th and 7th. They insisted on a
fair treatment for the Evangelical party, which meant freedom of conscience
and the right of public worship, and they demanded that Furbiti should be
compelled to justify his charges against the Evangelicals in the presence of
learned men who could speak for the Council of Bern. The Genevan
authorities had no wish to break irrevocably with their Bishop, nor to coerce
the ecclesiastical authorities; they pleaded that Furbiti was not under their
jurisdiction, and they referred the Bernese deputies to the Bishop or his
vicar. “We have been ordered to apply to you,” said the deputies from Bern.
“Your answer makes us see that you seek delay, and that you are not
treating us fairly; that you think little of the honour of the Council of Bern.
Here is the treaty of alliance (they produced the document), and we are
about to tear off the seals.” This was the formal way among the Swiss of
cancelling a treaty. The Councillors of Geneva then proposed that they
should compel the monk to appear before them and the deputies of Bern,

when explanations might be demanded from him. The deputies accepted the
offer, but on condition that there should be a conference between the monk
(Furbiti) and theologians sent from Bern (Farel and Viret). Next day Furbiti
was taken from the episcopal palace and placed in the town’s prison (Jan.
8th), and on the morrow (Jan. 9th) he was brought before the Council.
There he refused to plead before secular judges. The Council of Geneva
tried in vain to induce the vicar to nominate an ecclesiastical delegate who
was to sit in the Council and be present at the conference. Their
negotiations with the vicar, carried on for some days, were in vain. Then
they attempted to induce the Bernese to depart from their conditions. The
Council of Bern was immovable. It insisted on the immediate payment by
the Genevese of the debt due to Bern for the war of deliverance and for the
punishment of Furbiti (Jan. 25th, 1534). Driven to the wall, the Council of
Geneva resolved to override the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop and
his vicar. Furbiti was compelled to appear before the Council and the
deputies of Bern, and to answer to Farel and Viret on Jan. 27th and Feb. 3rd
(1534). On the afternoon of the latter day the partisans of the Bishop got up
another riot, in which one of them poniarded an Evangelical, Nicolas
Bergier. This riot seems to have exhausted the patience of the peaceable
citizens of Geneva, whether Romanists or Evangelicals. A band of about
five hundred assembled armed before the Town Hall, informed the Council
that they would no longer tolerate riots caused by turbulent priests, and that
they were ready to support civic authority and put down lawlessness with a
strong hand. The Council thereupon acted energetically. That night the
murderer, Claude Pennet, who had hid himself in the belfry of the cathedral,
was dragged from his place of concealment, tried next day, and hanged on
the day following (Feb. 5th). The houses of the principal rioters were
searched, and letters discovered proving a plot to seize the town and deliver
it into the hands of the Bishop. Pierre de la Baume had gone the length of
nominating a member of the Council of Freiburg, M. Pavillard, to act as his
deputy in secular affairs, and ordering him to massacre the Evangelicals
within the city.
When the excitement had somewhat died down, the deputies of Bern
pressed for a renewal of the proceedings against Furbiti. The monk was
again brought before the Council, and confronted by Farel and Viret. He
was forced to confess that he could not prove his assertions from the Holy
Scriptures, but had based them on the Decretals and the writings of Thomas

Aquinas, admitting that he had transgressed the regulations of the Council
of Geneva. He promised that, if allowed to preach on the following Sunday
(Feb. 15th), he would make public reparation to the Council of Bern. When
Sunday came he refused to keep his promise, and was sent back to prison.
[82]

Meanwhile the Evangelical community in Geneva was growing, and taking
organised form. One of the most prominent of the Genevan Evangelicals,
Jean Baudichon de la Maisonneuve, prepared a hall by removing a partition
between two rooms in his magnificent house, situated in that part of the city
which was the cradle of the Reformation in Geneva. There Farel, Viret, and
Froment preached to three or four hundred persons; and there the first
baptism according to the Reformed rite was celebrated in Geneva (Feb.
22nd, 1533). The audiences soon increased beyond the capacity of the hall,
and the Evangelicals, protected by the presence of the Bernese deputies,
took possession of the large audience hall or church of the Convent of the
Cordeliers in the same street (March 1st). The deputies from Bern
frequently asked the Council of Geneva to grant the use of one of the
churches of the town for the Evangelicals, but were continually answered
that the Council had not the power, but that they would not object if the
Evangelicals found a suitable place. This indirect authorisation enabled
them to meet in the convent church, which held between four and five
thousand people, and which was frequently filled. Thus the little band
increased. Farel preached for the first time in St. Peter’s on the 8th of
August 1535. Services were held in other houses also.[83]
The Bishop of Geneva, foiled in his attempt to regain possession of the
town by well-planned riots, united himself with the Duke of Savoy to
conquer the city by force of arms. Their combined forces advanced against
Geneva; they overran the country, seized and pillaged the country houses of
the citizens, and subjected the town itself to a close investment. The war
was a grievous matter for the city, but it furthered the Reformation. The
Bishop had leagued himself with the old enemy of Geneva; the priests, the
monks, the nuns were eager for his success; he compelled patriotic Roman
Catholics to choose between their religion and their country. It was also a
means of displaying the heroism of the Protestant pastors. Farel and
Froment were high-spirited Frenchmen, who scoffed at any danger lying in
the path of duty. They had braved a thousand perils in their missionary

work. Viret was not less courageous. The three worked on the fortifications
with the citizens; they shared the watches of the defenders; they encouraged
the citizens by word and deed. The Genevese were prepared for any
sacrifices to preserve their liberties. Four faubourgs, which formed a second
town almost as large as the first, were ordered to be demolished to
strengthen the defence. The city was reduced to great straits, and the
citizens of Bern seemed to be deaf to their cries for help.
Bern was doing its best by embassies to assist them; but it dared not attack
the Pays de Vaud when Freiburg, angry at the process of the Reformation,
threatened a counter attack. After the siege was raised, the strongholds in
the surrounding country remained in the possession of the enemy, and the
people belonging to Geneva were liable to be pillaged and maltreated.
Within the city the number of Evangelicals increased week by week. Then
came a sensational event which brought about the ruin of the Roman
Catholic party. A woman, Antonia Vax, cook in the house of Claude
Bernard, with whom the three pastors dwelt, attempted to poison Viret,
Farel, and Froment.[84] The confession of the prisoner, combined with other
circumstances, created the impression among the members of Council and
the people of Geneva that the priests of the town had instigated the attempt,
and a strong feeling in favour of the Protestant pastors swept over the city.
The Council at once provided lodging for Viret and Farel in the Convent of
the Cordeliers. When the guardian of that convent asked leave to hold
public discussions on religious questions in the great church belonging to
the convent, it was at once granted.
The Council itself made arrangements for the public Disputation. Five
Thèses évangéliques were drafted by the Protestant pastors, and the Council
invited discussion upon them from all and sundry.[85] Invitations were sent
to the canons of the cathedral, and to all the priests and monks of Geneva;
safe-conducts were promised to all foreign theologians who desired to take
part;[86] a special attempt was made to induce a renowned Paris Roman
Catholic champion, Pierre Cornu, a theologian trained at the Sorbonne, who
happened to be at Grenoble, to defend the Romanist position by attacking
the Theses. The Theses themselves were posted up in Geneva as early as the
1st of May (1535), and copies were sent to all the priests and convents
within the territories of the Genevans.[87]

The Disputation was fixed to open on the 30th of May. The Council
nominated eight commissioners, half of whom were Roman Catholics, to
maintain order, and four secretaries to keep minutes of the proceedings.[88]
Efforts were made to induce Roman Catholic theologians of repute for their
learning to attend and attack the Theses. But the Bishop of Geneva had
forbidden the Disputation, and the Council were unable to prevail on any
stranger to appear. When the opening day arrived, and the Council,
commissioners, and secretaries were solemnly seated in their places in the
great hall of the convent, no Romanist defender of the faith appeared to
impugn the Evangelical Theses. Farel and Viret nevertheless expounded and
defended. The Disputation continued at intervals during four weeks, till the
24th of June, Romanist champions accepted the Reformers’ challenge—
Jean Chapuis, prior of the Dominican convent at Plainpalais, near Geneva,
and Jean Cachi, confessor to the Sisters of St. Clara in the city. But they
were no match for men like Farel. Chapuis himself apologised for the
absence of the Genevan priests and monks, by saying that even in his
convent there was a lack of learned men. The weakness of the Romanist
defence made a great impression on the people of Geneva. They went about
saying to each other, “If all Christian princes permitted a free discussion
like our MM. of Geneva, the affair would soon be settled without burnings,
or slaughter, or murders; but the Pope and his followers, the cardinals and
the bishops and the priests, know well that if free discussion is permitted all
is lost for them. So all these powers forbid any discussion or conversation
save by fire and by sword.” They knew that all throughout Romance
Switzerland the Reformers, whether in a minority or in a majority, were
eager for a public discussion.
When the Disputation was ended, Farel urged the Council to declare
themselves on the side of the Reformation; but they hesitated until popular
tumults forced their hand. On July 23rd, Farel preached in the Church of the
Madeleine. The Council made mild remonstrances. Then he preached in the
Church of St. Gervais. Lastly, on the 8th of August, the people forced him
to preach in the Cathedral, St. Peter’s (Aug. 8th). In the afternoon the
priests were at vespers as usual. As they chanted the Psalm—

“Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not:

Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat,”
someone in the throng shouted, “You curse, as you chant, all who make
graven images and trust in them. Why do you let them remain here?” It was
the signal for a tumult. The crowd rushed to throw to the ground and break
in pieces the statues of the saints; and the children pushing among the
crowd picked up the fragments, and rushing to the doors, said, “We have the
gods of the priests, would you like some?”[89] Next day the riots were
renewed in the parish and convent churches, and the images of the saints
were defaced or destroyed.
The Council met on the 9th, and summoned Farel before them. The minutes
state that he made an oratio magna, ending with the declaration that he and
his fellow-preachers were willing to submit to death if it could be shown
that they taught anything contrary to the Holy Scriptures. Then, falling on
his knees, he poured forth one of those wonderful prayers which more than
anything else exhibited the exalted enthusiasm of the great missionary. The
religious question was discussed next day in the Council of the Two
Hundred, when it was resolved to abolish the Mass provisionally, to
summon the monks before the Council, and to ask them to give their
reasons for maintaining the Mass and the worship of the saints. The two
Councils resolved to inform the people of Bern about what they had done.
[90]

It is evident that the two Councils had been hurried by the iconoclastic zeal
of the people along a path they had meant to tread in a much more leisurely
fashion. The political position was full of uncertainties. Their enemies were
still in the field against them. Bern seemed to be unable to assist them. They
were ready to welcome the intervention of France. It was the fear of
increasing their external troubles rather than any zeal for the Roman
Catholic faith that had prevented the Council from espousing the
Reformation immediately after the public Disputation. “If we abolish the

Mass, image worship, and everything popish, for one enemy we have now
we are sure to have an hundred,” was their thought.[91]
The official representatives of the Roman Catholic religion did not appear
to advantage at this crisis of their fate. They were in no haste to defend their
worship before the Council. When they at last appeared (Nov. 29th, 1535),
the monks in the forenoon and the secular clergy in the afternoon, there was
a careless indifference in their answers. The Council seem to have referred
them to Farel’s summary of the matters discussed in the public Disputation
which began on the 30th of May, and to have asked them what they had to
say against its conclusions and in favour of the Mass and of the adoration of
the saints.[92] The monks one after another (twelve of them appeared before
the Council) answered monotonously that they were unlearned people, who
lived as they had been taught by their fathers, and did not inquire further.
The secular clergy, by their spokesman Roletus de Pane, said that they had
nothing to do with the Disputation and what had been said there; that they
had no desire to listen to more addresses from Farel; and that they meant to
live as their predecessors.[93] This was the end. The two deputations of
monks and seculars were informed by the Council that they must cease
saying Mass until further orders were given. The Reformation was legally
established in Geneva, and the city stood forth with Bern as altogether
Protestant.[94]
The dark clouds on the political horizon were rising. France seemed about
to interfere in favour of Geneva, and the fear of France in possession of the
“gate of western Switzerland” was stronger than reluctance to permit
Geneva to become a Protestant city. The Council of Freiburg promised to
allow the Bernese army to march through their territory. Bern renounced its
alliance with Savoy on November 29th, 1535. War was declared on January
16th. The army of Bern left its territories, gathering reinforcements as it
went; for towns like Neuville, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Payerne—oppressed
Protestant communities in Romance Switzerland—felt that the hour of their
liberation was at hand, and their armed burghers were eager to strike one
good stroke at their oppressors under the leadership of the proud republic.
There was little fighting. The greater part of the Pays de Vaud was
conquered without striking a blow, and the army of the Duke of Savoy and
the Bishop of Geneva was dispersed without a battle. A few sieges were
needed to complete the victory. The great republic, after its fashion, had

waited till the opportune moment, and then struck once and for all. Its
decisive victory brought deliverance not only to Geneva, but to Lausanne
and many other Protestant municipalities in Romance Switzerland (Aug.
7th, 1536). The democracy of Geneva was served heir to the seignorial
rights of the Bishop, and to the sovereign rights of the Duke of Savoy over
city and lands. Geneva became an independent republic under the
protectorate of Bern, and to some extent dependent on that canton.
In the month of December 1535, the Syndics and Council of Geneva had
adopted the legend on the coat of arms of the town, Post tenebras lux—a
device which became very famous, and appeared on its coinage. The
resolution of the Council of the Two Hundred to abolish the Mass and saint
worship was officially confirmed by the citizens assembled, “as was the
custom, by sound of bell and of trumpet” (May 21st, 1536).
Geneva had gained much. It had won political independence, for which it
had been fighting for thirty years, modified by its relations to Bern,[95] but
greater than it had ever before enjoyed. The Reformed religion had been
established, although the fact remained that the Romanist partisans had still
a good deal of hidden strength. But much was still to be done to make the
town the citadel of the Reformation which it was to become. Its past history
had demoralised its people. The rule of dissolute bishops and the example
of a turbulent and immoral clergy had poisoned the morals of the city.[96]
The liberty won might easily degenerate into licence, and ominous signs
were not lacking that this was about to take place. “It is impossible to
deny,” says Kampschulte, the Roman Catholic biographer of Calvin, “that
disorder and demoralisation had become threatening in Geneva; it would
have been almost a miracle had it not been so.” Farel did what he could. He
founded schools. He organised the hospitals. He strove to kindle moral life
in the people of his adopted city. But his talents and his character fitted him
much more for pioneer work than for the task which now lay before him.
Farel was a chivalrous Frenchman, born among the mountains of Dauphiné,
whose courage, amounting to reckless daring, won for him the passionate
admiration of soldiers like Wildermuth,[97] and made him volunteer to lead
any forlorn hope however desperate. He was sympathetic to soft-
heartedness, yet utterly unable to restrain his tongue; in danger of his life
one week because of his violent language, and the next almost adored, by

those who would have slain him, for the reckless way in which he nursed
the sick and dying during a visitation of the plague. He was the brilliant
partisan leader, seeing only what lay before his eyes; incapable of self-
restraint; a learned theologian, yet careless in his expression of doctrine,
and continually liable to misapprehension. No one was better fitted to attack
the enemy’s strongholds, few less able to hold them when once possessed.
He saw, without the faintest trace of jealousy—the man was too noble—
others building on the foundations he had laid. It is almost pathetic to see
that none of the Romance Swiss churches whose Apostle he had been, cared
to retain him as their permanent leader. In the closing years of his life he
went back to his beloved France, and ended as he had begun, a pioneer
evangelist in Lyons, Metz, and elsewhere,—a leader of forlorn hopes,
carrying within him a perpetual spring and the effervescing recklessness of
youth. He had early seen that the pioneer life which he led was best lived
without wife or children, and he remained unmarried until his sixty-ninth
year. Then he met with a poor widow who had lost husband and property
for religion’s sake in Rouen, and had barely escaped with life. He married
her because in no other way could he find for her a home and protection.
Geneva needed a man of altogether different mould of character to do the
work that was now necessary. When Farel’s anxieties and vexations were at
their height, he learned almost by accident that a distinguished young
French scholar, journeying from Ferrara to Basel, driven out of his direct
course by war, had arrived in Geneva, and was staying for a night in the
town. This was Calvin.

§ 4. Calvin: Youth and Education.

Jean Cauvin (latinised into Calvinus) was born at Noyon in Picardy on the
10th of July 1509. He was the second son in a family of four sons and two
daughters. His father, Gerard Cauvin, was a highly esteemed lawyer, the
confidential legal adviser of the nobility and higher clergy of the district.
His mother, Jeanne La France, a very beautiful woman, was noted for her
devout piety and her motherly affection. Calvin, who says little about his
childhood, relates how he was once taken by his mother on the festival of
St. Anna to see a relic of the saint preserved in the Abbey of Ourscamp,

near Noyon, and that he remembers kissing “part of the body of St. Anna,
the mother of the Virgin Mary.”[98]
The Cauvins belonged to what we should call the upper middle class in
social standing, and the young Jean entered the house of the noble family of
de Montmor to share the education of the children, his father paying for all
his expenses. The young de Montmors were sent to College in Paris, and
Jean Cauvin, then fourteen years of age, went with them. This early social
training never left Calvin, who was always the reserved, polished French
gentleman—a striking contrast to his great predecessor Luther.
Calvin was a Picard, and the characteristics of the province were seen in its
greatest son. The Picards were always independent, frequently strongly
anti-clerical, combining in a singular way fervent enthusiasm and a cold
tenacity of purpose. No province in France had produced so many
sympathisers with Wiclif and Hus, and “Picards” was a term met with as
frequently on the books of Inquisitors as “Wiclifites,” “Hussites,” or
“Waldenses”—all the names denoting dissenters from the mediæval Church
who accepted all the articles of the Apostles’ Creed but were strongly anti-
clerical. These “brethren” lingered in all the countries of Western Europe
until the sixteenth century, and their influence made itself felt in the
beginnings of the stirrings for reform.
Gerard Cauvin had early seen that his second son, Jean, was de bon esprit,
d’une prompte naturelle à concevoir, et inventif en l’estude des lettres
humaines,[99] and this induced him to give the boy as good an education as
he could, and to destine him for the study of theology. His legal connection
with the higher clergy of Noyon enabled him, in the fashion of the day, to
procure for his son more than one benefice. The boy was tonsured, a portion
of the revenue was used to pay for a curate who did the work, and the rest
went to provide for the lad’s education.
Young Calvin went with the three sons of the de Montmor family to the
College de la Marche in Paris. It was not a famous one, but when Calvin
studied there in the lowest class he had as his professor Mathurin Cordier,
the ablest teacher of his generation.[100] His aim was to give his pupils a
thorough knowledge of the French and Latin languages—a foundation on
which they might afterwards build for themselves. He had a singularly
sweet disposition, and a very open mind. He was brought to know the

Gospel by Robert Estienne, and in 1536 his name was inscribed, along with
those of Courat and Clement Marot, on the list of the principal heretics in
Paris. Calvin was not permitted to remain long under this esteemed teacher.
The atmosphere was probably judged to be too liberal for one who was
destined to study theology. He was transferred to the more celebrated
College de Montaigu. Calvin was again fortunate in his principal teachers.
He became the pupil of Noël Béda and of Pierre Tempête, who taught him
the art of formal disputation.
Calvin had come to Paris in his fourteenth year, and left it when he was
nineteen—the years when a lad becomes a man, and his character is
definitely formed. If we are to judge by his own future references, no one
had more formative influence over him than Mathurin Cordier—short as
had been the period of their familiar intercourse. Calvin had shown a
singularly acute mind, and proved himself to be a scholar who invariably
surpassed his fellow students. He was always surrounded by attached
friends—the three brothers de Montmor, the younger members of the
famous family of Cop, and many others. These student friends were
devoted to him all his life. Many of them settled with him at Geneva.
Calvin left the College de Montaigu in 1528. Sometime during the same
year another celebrated pupil entered it. This was Ignatius Loyola. Whether
the two great leaders attended College together, whether they ever met, it is
impossible to say—the dates are not precise enough.

“Perhaps they crossed each other in some street of Mount Sainte-
Geneviève: the young Frenchman of eighteen on horseback as usual,
and the Spaniard of six and thirty on foot, his purse furnished with
some pieces of gold he owed to charity, shoving before him an ass
burdened with his books, and carrying in his pocket a manuscript,
entitled Exercitia Spiritualia.”[101]

Calvin left Paris because his father had now resolved that his son should be
a lawyer and not a theologian. Gerard Cauvin had quarrelled with the
ecclesiastics of Noyon, and had even been excommunicated. He refused to
render his accounts in two executry cases, and had remained obstinate. Why
he was so, it is impossible to say. His children had no difficulty in arranging
matters after his death. The quarrel ended the hopes of the father to provide

well for his son in the Church, and he ordered him to quit Paris for the great
law school at Orleans. It is by no means improbable that the father’s
decision was very welcome to the son. Bèze tells us that Calvin had already
got some idea of the true religion, had begun to study the Holy Scriptures,
and to separate himself from the ceremonies of the Church;[102]—perhaps
his friendship with Pierre Robert Olivétan, a relation, a native of Noyon,
and the translator of the Bible into French, had brought this about. The
young man went to Orleans in the early part of 1528 and remained there for
a year, then went on to Bourges, in order to attend the lectures of the
famous publicist, André Alciat, who was destined to be as great a reformer
of the study of law as Calvin was of the study of theology. In Orleans with
its Humanism, and in Bourges with its incipient Protestantism, Calvin was
placed in a position favourable for the growth of ideas which had already
taken root in his mind. At Bourges he studied Greek under Wolmar, a
Lutheran in all but the name, and dedicated to him long afterwards his
Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He seems to have
lived in the house of Wolmar; another inmate was Théodore de Bèze, the
future leader of the Protestants of France, then a boy of twelve.
The death of his father (May 26th, 1531) left Calvin his own master. He had
obeyed the paternal wishes when he studied for the Church in Paris; he had
obediently transferred himself to the study of law; he now resolved to
follow the bent of his own mind, and, dedicating himself to study, to
become a man of letters. He returned to Paris and entered the College
Fortet, meaning to attend the lectures of the Humanist professors whom
Francis I., under the guidance of Budé and Cop, was attracting to his
capital. These “royal lecturers” and their courses of instruction were looked
on with great suspicion by the Sorbonne, and Calvin’s conduct in placing
himself under their instruction showed that he had already emancipated
himself from that strict devotion to the “superstitions of the Papacy” to
which he tells us that he was obstinately attached in his boyhood. He soon
became more than the pupil of Budé, Cop, and other Humanists. He was a
friend, admitted within the family circle. He studied Greek with Pierre
Danès and Hebrew under Vatable. In due time (April 1532), when barely
twenty-three years of age, he published at his own expense his first book, a
learned commentary on the two books of Seneca’s De Clementia.

The book is usually referred to as an example of precocious erudition. The
author shows that he knew as minutely as extensively the whole round of
classical literature accessible to his times. He quotes, and that aptly, from
fifty-five separate Latin authors—from thirty-three separate works of
Cicero, from all the works of Horace and Ovid, from five comedies of
Terence, and from all the works of Virgil. He quotes from twenty-two
separate Greek authors—from five or six of the principal writings of
Aristotle, and from four of the writings of Plato and of Plutarch. Calvin
does not quote Plautus, but his use of the phrase remoram facere makes it
likely that he was well acquainted with that writer also.[103] The future
theologian was also acquainted with many of the Fathers—with Augustine,
Lactantius, Jerome, Synesius, and Cyprian. Erasmus had published an
edition of Seneca, and had advised scholars to write commentaries, and
young Calvin followed the advice of the Prince of Humanists. Did he
imitate him in more? Did Calvin also disdain to use the New Learning
merely to display scholarship, did he mean to put it to modern uses? Francis
I. was busy with one of his sporadic persecutions of the Huguenots when
the book was published, and learned conjectures have been made whether
the two facts had any designed connection—An exhortation addressed to an
emperor to exercise clemency, and a king engaging in persecuting his
subjects. Two things seem to show that Calvin meant his book to be a
protest against the persecution of the French Protestants. His preface is a
daring attack on the abuses which were connected with the administration
of justice in the public courts, and he says distinctly that he hopes the
Commentary will be of service to the public.[104]
It seems evident from Calvin’s correspondence that he had joined the small
band of Protestants in Paris, and that he was intimate with Gerard Roussel,
the Evangelical preacher,[105] the friend of Marguerite of Navarre, of
Lefèvre, of Farel, and a member of the “group of Meaux.” The question
occurs, When did his conversion take place? This has been keenly debated;
[106]
but the arguments concern words more than facts, and arise from the
various meanings attached to the word “conversion” rather than from the
difficulty of determining the time. Calvin, who very rarely reveals the
secrets of his own soul, tells in his preface to his Commentary on the
Psalms, that God drew him from his obstinate attachment to the
superstitions of the Papacy by a “sudden conversion,” and that this took

place after he had devoted himself to the study of law in obedience to the
wishes of his father. It does not appear to have been such a sudden and
complete vision of divine graciousness as Luther received in the convent at
Erfurt. But it was a beginning. He received then some taste of true piety
(aliquo veræ pietatis gusto). He was abashed to find, he goes on to relate,
that barely a year afterwards, those who had a desire to learn what pure
doctrine was gradually ranged themselves around him to learn from him
who knew so little (me novitium adhuc et tironem). This was perhaps at
Orleans, but it may have been at Bourges. When he returned to Paris to
betake himself to Humanist studies, he was a Protestant, convinced
intellectually as well as drawn by the pleadings of the heart. He joined the
little band who had gathered round Estienne de la Forge, who met secretly
in the house of that pious merchant, and listened to the addresses of Gerard
Roussel. He was frequently called upon to expound the Scriptures in the
little society; and a tradition, which there is no reason to doubt, declares that
he invariably concluded his discourse with the words, “If God be for us,
who can be against us?”
He was suddenly compelled to flee from Paris. The theologians of the
Sorbonne were vehemently opposed to the “royal lecturers” who
represented the Humanism favoured by Margaret, the sister of Francis, and
Queen of Navarre. In their wrath they had dared to attack Margaret’s
famous book, Miroir de l’âme pécheresse, and had in consequence
displeased the Court. Nicolas Cop, the friend of Calvin, professor in the
College of Sainte Barbe, was Rector of the University (1533). He
assembled the four faculties, and the faculty of medicine disowned the
proceedings of the theologians. It was the custom for the Rector to deliver
an address before the University yearly during his term of office, and Cop
asked his friend Calvin to compose the oration.[107] Calvin made use of the
occasion to write on “Christian Philosophy,” taking for his motto, “Blessed
are the poor in spirit” (Matt. v. 3). The discourse was an eloquent defence
of Evangelical truth, in which the author borrowed from Erasmus and from
Luther, besides adding characteristic ideas of his own. The wrath of the
Sorbonne may be imagined. Two monks were employed to accuse the
author of heresy before Parlement, which responded willingly. It called the
attention of the King to papal Bulls against the Lutheran heresy. Meanwhile
people discovered that Calvin was the real author, and he had to flee from
Paris. After wanderings throughout France he found refuge in Basel (1535).

It was there that he finished his Christianæ Religionis Institutio, which had
for its preface the celebrated letter addressed to Francis I. King of France.
The book was the strongest weapon Protestantism had yet forged against
the Papacy, and the letter “a bold proclamation, solemnly made by a young
man of six-and-twenty, who, more or less unconsciously, assumed the
command of Protestantism against its enemies, calumniators, and
persecutors.” News had reached Basel that Francis, who was seeking the
alliance of the German Lutheran Princes, and was posing as protector of the
German Protestants, had resolved to purge his kingdom of the so-called
heresy, and was persecuting his Protestant subjects. This double-dealing
gave vigour to Calvin’s pen. He says in his preface that he wrote the book
with two distinct purposes. He meant it to prepare and qualify students of
theology for reading the divine Word, that they may have an easy
introduction to it, and be able to proceed in it without obstruction. He also
meant it to be a vindication of the teaching of the Reformers against the
calumnies of their enemies, who had urged the King of France to persecute
them and drive them from France. His dedication was: To His Most
Gracious Majesty, Francis, King of France and his sovereign, John Calvin
wisheth peace and salvation in Christ. Among other things he said:

“I exhibit my confession to you that you may know the nature of that
doctrine which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen
who are now disturbing your kingdom with fire and sword. For I shall
not be afraid to acknowledge that this treatise contains a summary of
that very doctrine which, according to their clamours, deserves to be
punished with imprisonment, banishment, proscription, and flames,
and to be exterminated from the face of the earth.”

He meant to state in calm precise fashion what Protestants believed; and he
made the statement in such a way as to challenge comparison between those
beliefs and the teaching of the mediæval Church. He took the Apostles’
Creed, the venerable symbol of Western Christendom, and proceeded to
show that when tested by this standard the Protestants were truer Catholics
than the Romanists. He took this Apostles’ Creed, which had been recited or
sung in the public worship of the Church of the West from the earliest
times, which differed from other creeds in this, that it owed its authority to
no Council, but sprang directly from the heart of the Church, and he made it

the basis of his Institutio. For the Institutio is an expansion and exposition
of the Apostles’ Creed, and of the four sentences which it explains. Its basis
is: I believe in God the Father; and in His Son Jesus Christ; and in the Holy
Ghost; and in the Holy Catholic Church. The Institutio is divided into four
parts, each part expounding one of these fundamental sentences. The first
part describes God, the Creator, or, as the Creed says: “God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”; the second, God the Son, the
Redeemer and His Redemption; the third, God the Holy Ghost and His
Means of Grace; the fourth, the Holy Catholic Church, its nature and marks.
This division and arrangement, based on the Apostles’ Creed, means that
Calvin did not think he was expounding a new theology or had joined a new
Church. The theology of the Reformation was the old teaching of the
Church of Christ, and the doctrinal beliefs of the Reformers were those
views of truth which were founded on the Word of God, and which had
been known, or at least felt, by pious people all down the generations from
the earliest centuries. He and his fellow Reformers believed and taught the
old theology of the earliest creeds, made plain and freed from the
superstitions which mediæval theologians had borrowed from pagan
philosophy and practices.
The first edition of the Institutio was published in March 1536, in Latin. It
was shorter and in many ways inferior to the carefully revised editions of
1539 and 1559. In the later editions the arrangement of topics was
somewhat altered; but the fundamental doctrine remains unchanged; the
author was not a man to publish a treatise on theology without carefully
weighing all that had to be said. In 1541, Calvin printed a French edition,
which he had translated himself “for the benefit of his countrymen.”
After finishing his Institutio (the MS. was completed in August 1535, and
the printing in March 1536), Calvin, under the assumed name of Charles
d’Espeville, set forth on a short visit to Italy with a companion, Louis du
Tillet, who called himself Louis de Haulmont. He intended to visit Renée,
Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII. of France, known for her piety
and her inclination to the Reformed faith. He also wished to see something
of Italy. After a short sojourn he was returning to Strassburg, with the
intention of settling there and devoting himself to a life of quiet study, when
he was accidentally compelled to visit Geneva, and his whole plan of life

was changed. The story can best be told in his own words. He says in the
preface to his Commentary on the Psalms:

“As the most direct route to Strassburg, to which I then intended to
retire, was blocked by the wars, I had resolved to pass quickly by
Geneva, without staying longer than a single night in that city.... A
person (Louis du Tillet) who has now returned to the Papists
discovered me and made me known to others. Upon this Farel, who
burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the Gospel, immediately
strained every nerve to detain me. After having learnt that my heart
was set upon devoting myself to private studies, for which I wished to
keep myself free from other pursuits, and finding that he gained
nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation, that God
would curse my retirement and the tranquillity of the studies which I
sought, if I should withdraw and refuse assistance when the necessity
was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror that I
desisted from the journey which I had undertaken.”

§ 5. Calvin with Farel in Geneva.

Calvin was twenty-seven years of age and Farel twenty years older when
they began to work together in Geneva; and, notwithstanding the disparity
in age and utter dissimilarity of character, the two men became strongly
attached to each other. “We had one heart and one soul,” Calvin says. Farel
introduced him to the leading citizens, who were not much impressed by the
reserved, frail young foreigner whose services their pastor was so anxious
to secure. They did not even ask his name. The minute of the Council (Sept.
5th, 1536), giving him employment and promising him support, runs:
“Master William Farel stated the need for the lecture begun by this
Frenchman in St. Peter’s.”[108] Calvin had declined the pastorate; but he
had agreed to act as “professor in sacred learning to the Church in Geneva
(Sacrarum literarum in ecclesia Genevensi professor).” His power was of
that quiet kind that is scarcely felt till it has gripped and holds.
He began his work by giving lectures daily in St. Peter’s on the Epistles of
St. Paul. They were soon felt to be both powerful and attractive. Calvin
soon made a strong impression on the people of the city. An occasion arose
which revealed him in a way that his friends had never before known. Bern

had conquered the greater part of the Pays de Vaud in the late war. Its
Council was determined to instruct the people of its newly acquired
territory in Evangelical principles by means of a public Disputation, to be
held at Lausanne during the first week of October.[109] The three hundred
and thirty-seven priests of the newly conquered lands, the inmates of the
thirteen abbeys and convents, of the twenty-five priories, of the two
chapters of canons, were invited to come to Lausanne to refute if they could
the ten Evangelical Theses arranged by Farel and Viret.[110] The Council of
Bern pledged itself that there would be the utmost freedom of debate, not
only for its own subjects, but “for all comers, to whatever land they
belonged.” Farel insisted on this freedom in his own trenchant way: “You
may speak here as boldly as you please; our arguments are neither faggot,
fire, nor sword, prison nor torture; public executioners are not our doctors
of divinity.... Truth is strong enough to outweigh falsehood; if you have it,
bring it forward.” The Romanists were by no means eager to accept the
challenge. Out of the three hundred and thirty-seven priests invited, only
one hundred and seventy-four appeared, and of these only four attempted to
take part. Two who had promised to discuss did not show themselves. Only
ten of the forty religious houses sent representatives, and only one of them
ventured to meet the Evangelicals in argument.[111] As at Bern in 1528, as at
Geneva in May 1535, so here at Lausanne in October 1536, the Romanists
showed themselves unable to meet their opponents, and the policy of Bern
in insisting on public Disputations was abundantly justified.
Farel and Viret were the Protestant champions. Farel preached the opening
sermon in the cathedral on Oct. 1st, and closed the conference by another
sermon on Oct. 8th. The discussion began on the Monday, when the huge
cathedral was thronged by the inhabitants of the city and of the surrounding
villages. In the middle of the church a space was reserved for the disputants.
There sat the four secretaries, the two presidents, and five commissioners
representing les Princes Chretiens Messieurs de Berne, distinguished by
their black doublets and shoulder-knots faced with red, and by their broad-
brimmed hats ornamented with great bunches of feathers,—hats kept stiffly
on heads as befitting the representatives of such potent lords.
Calvin had not meant to speak; Farel and Viret were the orators; he was
only there in attendance. But on the Thursday, when the question of the
Real Presence was discussed, one of the Romanists read a carefully

prepared paper, in the course of which he said that the Protestants despised
and neglected the ancient Fathers, fearing their authority, which was against
their views. Then Calvin rose. He began with the sarcastic remark that the
people who reverenced the Fathers might spend some little time in turning
over their pages before they spoke about them. He quoted from one Father
after another,—“Cyprian, discussing the subject now under review in the
third epistle of his second book of Epistles, says ... Tertullian, refuting the
error of Marcion, says ... The author of some imperfect commentaries on St.
Matthew, which some have attributed to St. John Chrysostom, in the 11th
homily about the middle, says ... St. Augustine, in his 23rd Epistle, near the
end, says ... Augustine, in one of his homilies on St. John’s Gospel, the 8th
or the 9th, I am not sure at this moment which, says ...”;[112] and so on. He
knew the ancient Fathers as no one else in the century. He had not taken
their opinions second-hand from Peter of Lombardy’s Sententiæ as did most
of the Schoolmen and contemporary Romanist theologians. It was the first
time that he displayed, almost accidentally, his marvellous patristic
knowledge,—a knowledge for which Melanchthon could never sufficiently
admire him.
But in Geneva the need of the hour was organisation and familiar
instruction, and Calvin set himself to work at once. He has told us how he
felt. “When I came first to this church,” he said, “there was almost nothing.
Sermons were preached;[113] the idols had been sought out and burned, but
there was no other reformation; everything was in disorder.”[114] In the
second week of January he had prepared a draft of the reforms he wished
introduced. It was presented to the Small Council by Farel; the members
had considered it, and were able to transmit it with their opinion to the
Council of the Two Hundred on January 15th, 1537. It forms the basis of all
Calvin’s ecclesiastical work in Geneva, and deserves study.
The memorandum treats of four things, and four only—the Holy Supper of
our Lord (la Saincte Cène de Nostre Seigneur), singing in public worship,
the religious instruction of children, and marriage.
In every rightly ordered church, it is said, the Holy Supper ought to be
celebrated frequently, and well attended. It ought to be dispensed every
Lord’s Day at least;[115] such was the practice in the Apostolic Church, and
ought to be ours; the celebration is a great comfort to all believers, for in it

they are made partakers of the Body and Blood of Jesus, of His death, of
His life, of His Spirit, and of all His benefits. But the present weakness of
the people makes it undesirable to introduce so sweeping a change, and
therefore it is proposed that the Holy Supper be celebrated once each month
“in one of the three places where sermons are now delivered—in the
churches of St. Peter, St. Gervais, and de Rive.” The celebration, however,
ought to be for the whole Church of Geneva, and not simply for those living
in the quarters of the town where these churches are. Thus every one will
have the opportunity of monthly communion. But if unworthy partakers
approach the Table of the Lord, the Holy Supper will be soiled and
contaminated. To prevent this, the Lord has placed the discipline de
l’excommunication within His Church in order to maintain its purity, and
this ought to be used. Perhaps the best way of exercising it is to appoint
men of known worth, dwelling in different quarters of the town, who ought
to be trusted to watch and report to the ministers all in their neighbourhood
who despise Christ Jesus by living in open sin. The ministers ought to warn
all such persons not to come to the Holy Supper, and the discipline of
excommunication only begins when such warnings are unheeded.
Congregational singing of Psalms ought to be part of the public worship of
the Church of Christ; for Psalms sung in this way are really public prayers,
and when they are sung hearts are moved and worshippers are incited to
form similar prayers for themselves, and to render to God the like praises
with the same loving loyalty. But as all this is unusual, and the people need
to be trained, it may be well to select children, to teach them to sing in a
clear and distinct fashion in the congregation, and if the people listen with
all attention and follow “with the heart what is sung by the mouth,” they
will, “little by little, become accustomed to sing together” as a
congregation.[116]
It is most important for the due preservation of purity of doctrine that
children from their youth should be instructed how to give a reason for their
faith, and therefore some simple catechism or confession of faith ought to
be prepared and taught to the children. At “certain seasons of the year” the
children ought to be brought before the pastors, who should examine them
and expound the teachings of the catechism.
The ordinance of marriage has been disfigured by the evil and unscriptural
laws of the Papacy, and it were well that the whole matter be carefully

thought over and some simple rules laid down agreeable to the Word of
God.
This memorandum, for it is scarcely more, was dignified with the name of
the Articles (Articuli de regimine ecclesiæ). It was generally approved by
the Small Council and the Council of Two Hundred, who made, besides, the
definite regulations that the Holy Supper should be celebrated four times in
the year, and that announcements of marriages should be made for three
successive Sundays before celebration. But it is very doubtful whether the
Council went beyond this general approval, or that they gave definite and
deliberate consent to Calvin’s proposals about “the discipline of
excommunication.”
These Articles were superseded by the famous Ordonnances ecclésiastiques
de l’Église de Genève, adopted on Nov. 20th, 1541; but as they are the first
instance in which Calvin publicly presented his special ideas about
ecclesiastical government, it may be well to describe what these were. To
understand them aright, to see the new thing which Calvin tried to introduce
into the Church life of the sixteenth century, it is necessary to distinguish
between two things which it must be confessed were practically entangled
with each other in these days—the attempt to regulate the private life by
laws municipal or national, and the endeavour to preserve the solemnity and
purity of the celebration of the Holy Supper.
When historians, ecclesiastical or other, charge Calvin with attempting the
former, they forget that there was no need for him to do so. Geneva, like
every other mediæval town, had its laws which interfered with private life
at every turn, and that in a way which to our modern minds seems the
grossest tyranny, but which was then a commonplace of city life. Every
mediæval town had its laws against extravagance in dress, in eating and in
drinking, against cursing and swearing, against gaming, dances, and
masquerades. They prescribed the number of guests to be invited to
weddings, and dinners, and dances; when the pipers were to play, when they
were to leave off, and what they were to be paid. It must be confessed that
when one turns over the pages of town chronicles, or reads such a book as
Baader’s Nürnberger Polizeiordnung, the thought cannot help arising that
the Civic Fathers, like some modern law-makers, were content to place
stringent regulations on the statute-book, and then, exhausted by their moral
endeavour, had no energy left to put them into practice. But every now and

then a righteous fit seized them, and maid-servants were summoned before
the Council for wearing silk aprons, or fathers for giving too luxurious
wedding feasts, or citizens for working on a Church festival, or a mother,
for adorning her daughter too gaily for her marriage. The citizens of every
mediæval town lived under a municipal discipline which we would
pronounce to be vexatious and despotic. Every instance quoted by modern
historians to prove, as they think, Calvin’s despotic interference with the
details of private life, can be paralleled by references to the police-books of
mediæval towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To make them
ground of accusation against Calvin is simply to plead ignorance of the
whole municipal police of the later Middle Ages. To say that Calvin
acquiesced in or approved of such legislation is simply to show that he
belonged to the sixteenth century. When towns adopted the Reformation,
the spirit of civic legislation did not change, but some old regulations were
allowed to lapse, and fresh ones suggested by the new ideas took their
place. There was nothing novel in the law which Bern made for the Pays de
Vaud in 1536 (Dec. 24th), prohibiting dancing with the exception of “trois
danses honêtes” at weddings; but it was a new regulation which prescribed
that parents must bring their daughters to the marriage altar “le chiefz
couvert.” It was not a new thing when Basel in 1530 appointed three
honourable men (one from the Council and two from the commonalty) to
watch over the morals of the inhabitants of each parish, and report to the
Council. It was new, but quite in the line of mediæval civic legislation,
when Bern forbade scandalous persons from approaching the Lord’s Table
(1532).
Calvin’s thought moved on another plane. He was distinguished among the
Reformers for his zeal to restore again the conditions which had ruled in the
Church of the first three centuries. This had been a favourite idea with
Lefèvre,[117] who had taught it to Farel, Gerard Roussel, and the other
members of the “group of Meaux.” Calvin may have received it from
Roussel; but there is no need to suppose that it did not come to him quite
independently. He had studied the Fathers of the first three centuries more
diligently than any of his contemporaries. He recognised as none of them
did that the Holy Supper of the Lord was the centre of the religious life of
the Church, and the apex and crown of her worship. He saw how careful the
Church of the first three centuries had been to protect the sacredness of the
simple yet profound rite; and that it had done so by preventing the approach

of all unworthy communicants. Discipline was the nerve of the early
Church, and excommunication was the nerve of discipline; and Calvin
wished to introduce both. Moreover, he knew that in the early Church it
belonged to the membership and to the ministry to exercise discipline and
to pronounce excommunication. He desired to reintroduce all these
distinctive features of the Church of the first three centuries—weekly
communion, discipline and excommunication exercised by the pastorate
and the members. He recognised that when the people had been accustomed
to come to the Lord’s Table only once or twice in the year, it was impossible
to introduce weekly communion all at once. But he insisted that the
warnings of St. Paul about unworthy communicants were so weighty that
notorious sinners ought to be prevented from approaching the Holy Supper,
and that the obstinately impenitent should be excommunicated. This and
this alone was the distinctive thing about Calvin’s proposals; this was the
new conception which he introduced.
Calvin’s mistake was that, while he believed that the membership and the
pastorate should exercise discipline and excommunication, he also insisted
that the secular power should enforce the censures of the Church. His ideas
worked well in the French Church, a Church “under the cross,” and in the
same position as the Church of the early centuries. But the conception that
the secular power ought to support with civil pains and penalties the
disciplinary decisions of ecclesiastical Courts, must have produced a
tyranny not unlike what had existed in the mediæval Church. Calvin’s ideas,
however, were never accepted save nominally in any of the Swiss Churches
—not even in Geneva. The very thought of excommunication in the hands
of the Church was eminently distasteful to the Protestants of the sixteenth
century; they had suffered too much from it as exercised by the Roman
Catholic Church. Nor did it agree with the conceptions which the
magistrates of the Swiss republics had of their own dignity, that they should
be the servants of the ministry to carry out their sentences.[118] The leading
Reformers in German Switzerland almost universally held that
excommunication, if it ever ought to be practised, should be in the hands of
the civil authorities.
Zwingli did not think that the Church should exercise the right of
excommunication. He declared that the example of the first three centuries
was not to be followed, because in these days the “Church could have no

assistance from the Emperors, who were pagans”; whereas in Zurich there
was a Christian magistracy, who could relieve the Church of what must be
in any case a disagreeable duty. His successor, Bullinger, the principal
adviser of the divines of the English Reformation, went further. Writing to
Leo Jud (1532), he declares that excommunication ought not to belong to
the Church, and that he doubts whether it should be exercised even by the
secular authorities; and in a letter to a Romance pastor (Nov. 24th, 1543) he
expounds his views about excommunication, and states how he differs from
his optimos fratres Gallos (Viret, Farel, and Calvin).[119] The German Swiss
Reformers took the one side, and the French Swiss Reformers took the
other; and the latter were all men who had learned to reverence the usages
of the Church of the first three centuries, and desired to see its methods of
ecclesiastical discipline restored.
The people invariably sided with the German-speaking Reformers.[120]
Calvin managed, with great difficulty, to introduce excommunication into
Geneva after his return from exile, but not in a way conformable to his
ideas. Farel could not get it introduced into Neuchâtel. He believed,
founding on the New Testament,[121] that the membership of each parish
had the right to exclude from the Holy Supper sinners who had resisted all
admonitions. But the Council and community of Neuchâtel would not
tolerate the “practice and usage of Excommunication,” and did not allow it
to appear in their ecclesiastical ordinances of 1542 or of 1553.
Oecolampadius induced the Council of Basel to permit excommunication,
and to inscribe the names of the excommunicate on placards fixed on the
doors of the churches. Zwingli remonstrated vigorously, and the practice
was abandoned. Bern was willing to warn open sinners from approaching
the Lord’s Table, but would not hear of excommunication, and declared
roundly that “ministers, who were sinners themselves, being of flesh and
blood, should not attempt to penetrate into the individual consciences,
whose secrets were known to God alone.” Viret tried to introduce a
discipline ecclésiastique into the Pays de Vaud, but was unable to induce
magistrates or people to accept it. The young Protestant Churches of
Switzerland, with the very doubtful exception of Geneva after 1541, refused
to allow the introduction of the disciplinary usages of the primitive Church.
They had no objection to discipline, however searching and vexatious,
provided it was simply an application of the old municipal legislation, to

which they had for generations been accustomed, to the higher moral
requirements of religion.[122] It was universally recognised that the standard
of moral living all over French Switzerland was very low, and that stringent
measures were required to improve it. No exception was taken to the severe
reprimand which the Council of Bern addressed to the subject Council of
Lausanne for their failure to correct the evil habits of the people of that old
episcopal town;[123] but such discipline had to be exercised in the old
mediæval way through the magistrates, and not in any new-fangled fashion
borrowed from the primitive Church. So far as Switzerland was concerned,
Calvin’s entreaties to model their ecclesiastical life on what he believed
with Lefèvre to be the golden period of the Church’s history, fell on
heedless ears. One must go to the French Church, and in a lesser degree to
the Church of Knox in Scotland, to see Calvin’s ideas put in practice; it is
vain to look for this in Switzerland.
The Catechism for children was published in 1537, and was meant,
according to the author, to give expression to a simple piety, rather than to
exhibit a profound knowledge of religious truth. But, as Calvin himself felt
later, it was too theological for children, and was superseded by a second
Catechism, published immediately after his return to Geneva in 1541. The
first Catechism was entitled Instruction and Confession of Faith for the use
of the Church of Geneva. It expounded successively the Ten
Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the
Sacraments. The duties of the pastorate and of the magistracy were stated in
appendices.[124]
The Confession of Faith had for its full title, Confession de la Foy laquelle
tous bourgois et habitans de Genève et subjectz du pays doyvent jurer de
garder et tenir extraicte de l’Instruction dont on use en l’Église de la dicte
ville.[125] It reproduced the contents of the Instruction, and was, like it, a
condensed summary of the Institutio.
This Confession has often been attributed to Farel, but there can be little
doubt that it came from the pen of Calvin.[126] It was submitted to the
Council and approved by them, and they agreed that the people should be
asked to swear to maintain it, the various divisions of the districts of the
town appearing for the purpose before the secretary of the Council. The
proposal was then sent down to the Council of the Two Hundred, where it

was assented to, but not without opposition. The minutes show that some
members remained faithful to the Romanist faith. They said that they ought
not to be compelled to take an oath which was against their conscience.
Others who professed themselves Protestants asserted that to swear to a
Confession took from them their liberty. “We do not wish to be
constrained,” they said, “but to live in our liberty.” But in the end it was
resolved to do as the Council had recommended. So day by day the
dizenniers, or captains of the divisions of the town, brought their people to
the cathedral, where the secretary stood in the pulpit to receive the oath.
The magistrates set the example, and the people were sworn in batches,
raising their hands and taking the oath. But there were malcontents who
stayed away, and there were beginnings of trouble which was to increase.
Deputies from Bern, unmindful of the fact that their city had sworn in the
same way to their creed, encouraged the dissentients by saying that no one
could take such an oath without perjuring himself; and this opinion
strengthened the opposition. But the Council of Bern disowned its deputies,
[127]
and refused any countenance to the malcontents, and the trouble
passed. All Geneva was sworn to maintain the Confession.
Meanwhile the ministers of Geneva had been urging decision about the
question of discipline and excommunication; and the murmurs against them
grew stronger. The Council was believed to be too responsive to the
pleadings of the pastors, and a stormy meeting of the General Council (Nov.
25th) revealed the smouldering discontent. On the 4th of January (1538) the
Councils of Geneva rejected entirely the proposals to institute a discipline
which would protect the profanation of the Lord’s Table, by resolving that
the Holy Supper was to be refused to no person seeking to partake. On the
3rd of February, at the annual election of magistrates, four Syndics were
chosen who were known to be the most resolute opponents of Calvin and of
Farel. The new Council did not at first show itself hostile to the preachers:
their earliest minutes are rather deferential. But a large part of the citizens
were violently opposed to the preachers; the Syndics were their enemies:
collision was bound to come sooner or later.
It was at this stage that a proposal from Bern brought matters to a crisis.
The city contained many inhabitants who had been somewhat unwillingly
dragged along the path of Reformation. Those who clung to the old faith
were reinforced by others who had supported the Reformation simply as a

means of freeing the city from the rule of the Prince Bishop, and who had
no sympathy with the religious movement. The city had long been divided
into two parties, and the old differences reappeared as soon as the city
declared itself Protestant. The malcontents took advantage of everything
that could assist them to stay the tide of Reformation and hamper the work
of the ministers. They patronised the Anabaptists when they appeared in
Geneva; they supported the accusation brought against Farel and Calvin by
Pierre Caroli, that they were Arians because they refused to use the
Athanasian Creed; above all, they declared that they stood for liberty, and
called themselves Libertines. When Bern interfered, they hastened to
support its ecclesiastical suggestions.
Bern had never been contented with the position in which it stood to
Geneva after its conquest of the Pays de Vaud. When the war was ended, or
rather before it was finished, and while the Bernese army of deliverance
was occupying the town, the accompanying deputies of Bern had claimed
for their city the rights over Geneva previously exercised by the Prince
Bishop and the Vidomne or representative of the Duke of Savoy, whom
their army had conquered. They claimed to be the overlords of Geneva, as
they succeeded in making themselves masters of Lausanne and the Pays de
Vaud. The people of Geneva resisted the demand. They declared, Froment
tells us, that they had not struggled and fought for more than thirty years to
assert their liberties, in order to make themselves the vassals of their allies
or of anyone in the wide world.[128] Bern threatened to renounce alliance;
but Geneva stood firm; there was always France to appeal to for aid. In the
end Bern had to be content with much less than it had demanded.
Geneva became an independent republic, served heir to all the signorial
rights of the Prince Bishop and to all his revenues, successor also to all the
justiciary rights of the Vidomne or representative of the House of Savoy. It
gained complete sovereignty within the city; it also retained the same
sovereignty over the districts (mandements) of Penney, Jussy, and Thyez
which had belonged to the Prince Bishop. On the other side, Bern received
the district of Gaillard; Geneva bound itself to make no alliance nor
conclude any treaty without the consent of Bern; and to admit the Bernese
at all times into their city. The lordship over one or two outlying districts
was divided—Geneva being recognised as sovereign, and having the
revenues, and Bern keeping the right to judge appeals, etc.

It seemed to be the policy of Bern to create a strong State by bringing under
its strict control the greater portion of Romance Switzerland. Her subject
territories, Lausanne, a large part of the Pays de Vaud, Gex, Chablais, Orbe,
etc., surrounded Geneva on almost every side. If only Geneva were reduced
to the condition of the other Prince Bishopric, Lausanne, Bern’s dream of
rule would be realised. The Reformed Church was a means of solidifying
these conquests. Over all Romance territories subject to Bern the Bernese
ecclesiastical arrangements were to rule. Her Council was invariably the
last court of appeal. Her consistory was reproduced in all these French-
speaking local Churches. Her religious usages and ceremonies spread all
over this Romance Switzerland. The Church in Geneva was independent.
Might it not be brought into nearer conformity, and might not conformity in
ecclesiastical matters lead to the political incorporation which Bern so
ardently desired? The evangelist of almost all these Romance Protestant
Churches had been Farel. Their ecclesiastical usages had grown up under
his guidance. It would conduce to harmony in the attempt to introduce
uniformity with Bern if the Church of Geneva joined. Such was the external
political situation to be kept in view in considering the causes which led to
the banishment of Calvin from Geneva.
In pursuance of its scheme of ecclesiastical conformity, the Council of Bern
summoned a Synod, representing most of the Evangelical Churches in
western Switzerland, and laid its proposals before them. No detailed
account of the proceedings has been preserved. There were probably some
dissentients, of whom Farel was most likely one, who pled that the
Romance Churches might be left to preserve their own usages. But the
general result was that Bern resolved to summon another Synod,
representing the Romance Churches, to meet at Lausanne (March 30th,
1538). They asked (March 5th) the Council of Geneva to permit the
attendance of Farel and Calvin.[129] The letter reached Geneva on March
11th, and on that day the Genevan magistrates, unsolicited by Bern and
without consulting their ministers, resolved to introduce the Bernese
ceremonies into the Genevan Church. Next day they sent the letter of Bern
to Farel and Calvin, and at the same time warned the preachers that they
would not be allowed to criticise the proceedings of the Council in the
pulpit. Neither Farel nor Calvin made any remonstrance. They declared that
they were willing to go to Lausanne, asked the Council if they had any
orders to give, and said that they were ready to obey them; and this

although a second letter (March 20th) had come from Bern saying that if the
Genevan preachers would not accept the Bern proposals they would not be
permitted to attend the Synod.
Farel and Calvin accordingly went to the Synod at Lausanne, and were
parties to the decision arrived at, which was to accept the usages of Bern—
that all baptisms should be celebrated at stone fonts placed at the entrance
of the churches; that unleavened bread should be used at the Holy Supper;
and that four religious festivals should be observed annually, Christmas,
New Year’s Day, the Annunciation, and the Day of Ascension—with the
stipulation that Bern should warn its officials not to be too hard on poor
persons for working on these festival days.[130]
When the Council of Bern had got its ecclesiastical proposals duly adopted
by the representatives of the various Churches interested, its Council wrote
(April 15th) to the Council and to the ministers of Geneva asking them to
confer together and arrange that the Church of Geneva should adopt these
usages—the magistrates of Bern having evidently no knowledge of the
hasty resolution of the Genevan Council already mentioned. The letter was
discussed at a meeting of Council (April 19th, 1538), and several minutes,
all relating to ecclesiastical matters, were passed. It was needless to come to
any resolution about the Bern usages; they had been adopted already. The
letter from Bern was to be shown to Farel and Calvin, and the preachers
were to be asked and were to answer, yea or nay, would they at once
introduce the Bern ceremonies? The preachers said that the usages could
not be introduced at once. The third Genevan preacher, Elie Coraut, had
spoken disrespectfully of the Council in the city, and was forbidden to
preach, upon threat of imprisonment, until he had been examined about his
words.[131] Lastly, it was resolved that the Holy Supper should be celebrated
at once according to the Bern rites; and that if Farel and Calvin refused, the
Council was to engage other preachers who would obey their orders.[132]
Coraut, the blind preacher, preached as usual (April 20th). He was at once
arrested and imprisoned. In the afternoon, Farel and Calvin, accompanied
by several of the most eminent citizens of Geneva, appeared before the
Council to protest against Coraut’s imprisonment, and to demand his release
—Farel speaking with his usual daring vehemence, and reminding the
magistrates that but for his work in the city they would not be in the

position they occupied. The request was refused, and the Council took
advantage of the presence of the preachers to ask them whether they would
at once introduce the Bern usages. They replied that they had no objection
to the ceremonies, and would be glad to use them in worship provided they
were properly adopted,[133] but not on a simple order from the Council.
Farel and Calvin were then forbidden to preach. Next day the two pastors
preached as usual—Calvin in St. Peter’s and Farel in St. Gervaise. The
Council met to consider this act of disobedience. Some were for sending the
preachers to prison at once; but it was resolved to summon the Council of
the Two Hundred on the morrow (April 22nd) and the General Council on
the 24th. The letters of Bern (March 5th, March 20th, April 15th) were read,
and the Two Hundred resolved that they would “live according to the
ceremonies of Bern.” What then was to be done with Calvin and Farel?
Were they to be sent to the town’s prison? No! Better to wait till the Council
secured other preachers (it had been trying to do so and had failed), and
then dismiss them. The General Council then met;[134] resolved to “live
according to the ceremonies of Bern,” and to banish the three preachers
from the town, giving them three days to collect their effects.[135] Calvin
and Farel were sent into exile, and the magistrates made haste to seize the
furniture which had been given them when they were settled as preachers.
Calvin long remembered the threats and dangers of these April days and
nights. He was insulted in the streets. Bullies threatened to “throw him into
the Rhone.” Crowds of the baser sort gathered round his house. They sang
ribald and obscene songs under his windows. They fired shots at night,
more than fifty one night, before his door—“more than enough to astonish a
poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I have always been.”[136] It was
the memory of these days that made him loathe the very thought of
returning to Geneva.
The two Reformers, Calvin and Farel, left the town at once, determined to
lay their case before the Council of Bern, and also before the Synod of
Swiss Churches which was about to meet at Zurich (April 28th, 1538). The
Councillors of Bern were both shocked and scandalised at the treatment the
preachers had received from the Council of Geneva, and felt it all the more
that their proposal of conformity had served as the occasion. They wrote at
once to Geneva (April 27th), begging the Council to undo what they had
done; to remember that their proposal for uniformity had never been meant

to serve as occasion for compulsion in matters which were after all
indifferent.[137] Bern might be masterful, but it was almost always
courteous. The secular authority might be the motive force in all
ecclesiastical matters, but it was to be exercised through the machinery of
the Church. The authorities of Bern had been careful to establish an
ecclesiastical Court, the Consistory, of two pastors and three Councillors,
who dealt with all ecclesiastical details. It encouraged the meeting of
Synods all over its territories. Its proposals for uniformity had been
addressed to both the pastors and the Council of Geneva, and had spoken of
mutual consultation. They had no desire to seem even remotely responsible
for the bludgeoning of the Genevan ministers. The Council of Geneva
answered with a mixture of servility and veiled insolence[138] (April 30th).
Nothing could be made of them.
From Bern, Farel and Calvin went to Zurich, and there addressed a
memorandum to a Synod, which included representatives from Zurich,
Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Mühlhausen, Biel (Bienne), and the
two banished ministers from Geneva. It was one of those General
Assemblies which in Calvin’s eyes represented the Church Catholic, to
which all particular Churches owed deference, if not simple obedience. The
Genevan pastors presented their statement with a proud humility. They were
willing to accept the ceremonies of Bern, matters in themselves indifferent,
but which might be useful in the sense of showing the harmony prevailing
among the Reformed Churches; but they must be received by the Church of
Geneva, and not imposed upon it by the mere fiat of the secular authority.
They were quite willing to expound them to the people of Geneva and
recommend them. But if they were to return to Geneva, they must be
allowed to defend themselves against their calumniators; and their
programme for the organisation of the Church of Geneva, which had
already been accepted but had not been put in practice (January 16th, 1537),
[139]
must be introduced. It consisted of the following:—the establishment
of an ecclesiastical discipline, that the Holy Supper might not be profaned;
the division of the city into parishes, that each minister might be acquainted
with his own flock; an increase in the number of ministers for the town;
regular ordination of pastors by the laying on of hands; more frequent
celebration of the Holy Supper, according to the practice of the primitive
Church.[140] They confessed that perhaps they had been too severe; on this

personal matter they were willing to be guided.[141] They listened with
humility to the exhortations of some of the members of the Synod, who
prayed them to use more gentleness in dealing with an undisciplined
people. But on the question of principle and on the rights of the Church set
over against the State, they were firm. It was probably the first time that the
Erastians of eastern Switzerland had listened to such High Church doctrine;
but they accepted it and made it their own for the time being at least. The
Synod decided to write to the Council of Geneva and ask them to have
patience with their preachers and receive them back again; and they asked
the deputies from Bern to charge themselves with the affair, and do their
best to see Farel and Calvin reinstated in Geneva.
The deputies of Bern accepted the commission, and the Geneva pastors
went back to Bern to await the arrival of the Bern deputies from Zurich.
They waited, full of anxiety, for nearly fourteen days. Then the Bern
Council were ready to fulfil the request of the Synod.[142] Deputies were
appointed, and, accompanied by Farel and Calvin, set out for Geneva. The
two pastors waited on the frontier at Noyon or at Genthod while the
deputies of Bern went on to Geneva. They had an audience of the Council
(May 23rd), were told that the Council could not revoke what all three
Councils had voted. The Council of the Two Hundred refused to recall the
pastors. The Council General (May 26th) by a unanimous vote repeated the
sentence of exile, and forbade the three pastors (Farel, Calvin, and Coraut)
to set foot on Genevan territory.
Driven from Geneva, Calvin would fain have betaken himself to a quiet
student life; but he was too well known and too much valued to be left in
the obscurity he longed for. Strassburg claimed him to minister to the
French refugees who had settled within its protecting walls. He was invited
to attend the Protestant conference at Frankfurt; he was present at the union
conferences at Hagenau, at Worms, and at Regensburg. There he met the
more celebrated German Protestant divines, who welcomed him as they had
done no one else from Switzerland. Calvin put himself right with them
theologically by signing at once and without solicitation the Augsburg
Confession, and aided thereby the feeling of union among all Protestants.
He kindled in the breast of Melanchthon one of those romantic friendships
which the frail Frenchman, with the pallid face, black hair, and piercing

eyes, seemed to evoke so easily. Luther himself appreciated his theology
even on his jealously guarded theory of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper.
Meanwhile things were not going well in Geneva. Outwardly, there was not
much difference. Pastors ministered in the churches of the town, and the
ordinary and ecclesiastical life went on as usual. The magistrates enforced
the Articles; they condemned the Anabaptists, the Papists, all infringements
of the sumptuary and disciplinary laws of the town. They compelled every
householder to go to church. Still the old life seemed to be gone. The
Council and the Syndics treated the new pastors as their servants,
compelled them to render strict obedience to all their decisions in
ecclesiastical matters, and considered religion as a political affair. It is
undoubted that the morals of the town became worse,—so bad that the
pastors of Bern wrote a letter of expostulation to the pastors in Geneva,[143]
—and the Lord’s Supper seems to have been neglected. The contests
between parties within the city became almost scandalous, and the
independent existence of Geneva was threatened.[144]
At the elections the Syndics failed to secure their re-election. Men of more
moderate views were chosen, and from this date (Feb. 1539) the idea began
to be mooted that Geneva must ask Calvin to return. Private overtures were
made to him, but he refused. Then came letters from the Council, begging
him to come back and state his terms. He kept silence. Lausanne and
Neuchâtel joined their entreaties to those of Geneva. Calvin was not to be
persuaded. His private letters reveal his whole mind. He shuddered at
returning to the turbulent city. He was not sure that he was fit to take charge
of the Church in Geneva. He was in peace at Strassburg, minister to a
congregation of his own countrymen; and the pastoral tie once formed was
not to be lightly broken; yet there was an undercurrent drawing him to the
place where he first began the ministry of the Word. At length he wrote to
the Council of Geneva, putting all his difficulties and his longings before
them—neither accepting nor refusing. His immediate duty called him to the
conference at Worms.
The people of Geneva were not discouraged. On the 19th October, the
Council of the Two Hundred placed on their register a declaration that every
means must be taken to secure the services of “Maystre Johan Calvinus,”
and on the 22nd a worthy burgher and member of the Council of the Two
Hundred, Louis Dufour, was despatched to Strassburg with a letter from

both the civic Councils, begging Calvin to return to his “old place”
(prestine plache), “seeing our people desire you greatly,” and promising
that they would do what they could to content him.[145] Dufour got to
Strassburg only to find that Calvin had gone to Worms. He presented his
letters to the Council of the town, who sent them on by an express (eques
celeri cursu)[146] to Calvin (Nov. 6th, 1540). Far from being uplifted at the
genuine desire to receive him back again to Geneva, Calvin was terribly
distressed. He took counsel with his friends at Worms, and could scarcely
place the case before them for his sobs.[147] The intolerable pain he had at
the thought of going back to Geneva on the one hand, and the idea that
Bucer might after all be right when he declared that Calvin’s duty to the
Church Universal clearly pointed to his return,[148] overmastered him
completely. His friends, respecting his sufferings, advised him to postpone
all decision until again in Strassburg. Others who were not near him kept
urging him. Farel thundered at him (consterné par tes foudres).[149] The
pastors of Zurich wrote (April 5th 1541):

“You know that Geneva lies on the confines of France, of Italy, and of
Germany, and that there is great hope that the Gospel may spread from
it to the neighbouring cities, and thus enlarge the ramparts (les
boulevards) of the kingdom of Christ.—You know that the Apostle
selected metropolitan cities for his preaching centres, that the Gospel
might be spread throughout the surrounding towns.”[150]

Calvin was overcome. He consented to return to Geneva, and entered the
city still suffering from his repugnance to undertake work he was not at all
sure that he was fitted to do. Historians speak of a triumphal entry. There
may have been, though nothing could have been more distasteful to Calvin
at any time, and eminently so on this occasion, with the feelings he had.
Contemporary documents are silent. There is only the minute of the
Council, as formal as minutes usually are, relating that “Maystre Johan
Calvin, ministre evangelique,” is again in charge of the Church in Geneva
(Sept. 13th, 1541).[151]
Calvin was in Geneva for the second time, dragged there both times
unwillingly, his dream of a quiet scholar’s life completely shattered. The
work that lay before him proved to be almost as hard as he had foreseen it

would be. The common idea that from this second entry Calvin was master
within the city, is quite erroneous. Fourteen years were spent in a hard
struggle (1541-55); and if the remaining nine years of his life can be called
his period of triumph over opponents (1555-64), it must be remembered
that he was never able to see his ideas of an ecclesiastical organisation
wholly carried out in the city of his adoption. One must go to the Protestant
Church of France to see Calvin’s idea completely realised.[152]
On the day of his entry into Geneva (Sept. 13th, 1541) the Council resolved
that a Constitution should be given to the Church of the city, and a
committee was formed, consisting of Calvin, his colleagues in the ministry,
and six members of the Council, to prepare the draft. The work was
completed in twenty days, and ready for presentation. On September 16th,
however, it had been resolved that the draft when prepared should be
submitted for revision to the Smaller Council, to the Council of Sixty, and
finally to the Council of Two Hundred. The old opposition at once
manifested itself within these Councils. There seem to have been
alterations, and at the last moment Calvin thought that the Constitution
would be made worthless for the purpose of discipline and orderly
ecclesiastical rule. In the end, however, the drafted ordinances were adopted
unanimously by the Council of Two Hundred without serious alteration. The
result was the famous Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva in their first
form. They did not assume their final form until 1561.[153]
When these Ordinances of 1541 are compared with the principles of
ecclesiastical government laid down in the Institutio, with the Articles of
1537, and with the Ordinances of 1561, it can be seen that Calvin must
have sacrificed a great deal in order to content the magistrates of Geneva.
He had contended for the self-government of the Church, especially in
matters of discipline; the principle runs all through the chapters of the
fourth book of the Institutio. The Ordinances give a certain show of
autonomy, and yet the whole authority really rests with the Councils. The
discipline was exercised by the Consistory or session of Elders (Anciens);
but this Consistory was chosen by the Smaller Council on the advice of the
ministers, and was to include two members of the Smaller Council, four
from the Council of Sixty, and six from the Council of Two Hundred, and
when they had been chosen they were to be presented to the Council of Two
Hundred for approval. When the Consistory met, one of the four Syndics

sat as president, holding his baton, the insignia of his magisterial office, in
his hand, which, as the revised Ordinances of 1561 very truly said, “had
more the appearance of civil authority than of spiritual rule.” The revised
Ordinances forbade the president to carry his baton when he presided in
The Consistory, in order to render obedience to the distinction which is
“clearly shown in Holy Scripture to exist between the magistrate’s sword
and authority and the superintendence which ought to be in the Church”;
but the obedience to Holy Scripture does not seem to have gone further than
laying aside the baton for the time. It appears also that the rule of consulting
the ministers in the appointments made to the Consistory was not
unfrequently omitted, and that it was to all intents and purposes simply a
committee of the Councils, and anything but submissive to the pastors.[154]
The Consistory had no power to inflict civil punishments on delinquents. It
could only admonish and warn. When it deemed that chastisements were
necessary, it had to report to the Council, who sentenced. This was also
done in order to maintain the separation between the civil and ecclesiastical
power; but, in fact, it was a committee of the Council that reported to the
Council, and the distinction was really illusory. This state of matters was
quite repugnant to Calvin’s cherished idea, not only as laid down in the
Institution, but as seen at work in the Constitution of the French Protestant
Church, which was mainly his authorship. “The magnificent, noble, and
honourable Lords” of the Council (such was their title) of this small town of
13,000 inhabitants deferred in words to the teachings of Calvin about the
distinction between the civil and the spiritual powers, but in fact they
retained the whole power of rule or discipline in their own hands; and we
ought to see in the disciplinary powers and punishments of the Consistory
of Geneva, not an exhibition of the working of a Church organised on the
principles of Calvin, but the ordinary procedure of the Town Council of a
mediæval city. Their petty punishments and their minute interference with
private life are only special instances of what was common to all municipal
rule in the sixteenth century.
Through that century we find a protest against the mediæval intrusion of the
ecclesiastical power into the realm of civil authority, with the inevitable
reaction which made the ecclesiastical a mere department of national or
civic administration. Zurich under Zwingli, although it is usually taken as
the extreme type of this Erastian policy, as it came to be called later, went
no further than Bern, Strassburg, or other places. The Council of Geneva

had legal precedent when they insisted that the supreme ecclesiastical
power belonged to them. The city had been an ecclesiastical principality,
ruled in civil as well as in ecclesiastical things by its Bishop, and the
Council were legally the inheritors of the Bishop’s authority. This meant,
among other things, that the old laws against heresy, unless specially
repealed, remained on the Statute Book, and errors in doctrine were
reckoned to be of the nature of treasonable things; and this made heresies,
or variations in religious opinion from what the Statute Book had declared
to be the official view of truth, liable to civil pains and penalties.

“Castellio’s doubts as to the canonicity of the Song of Songs and as to
the received interpretation of Christ’s descent into Hades, Bolsec’s
criticism of predestination, Gryet’s suspected scepticism and
possession of infidel books, Servetus’ rationalism and anti-Trinitarian
creed, were all opinions judged to be criminal.... The heretic may be a
man of irreproachable character; but if heresy be treason against the
State,”[155]

he was a criminal, and had to be punished for the crime on the Statute
Book. To say that Calvin burnt Servetus, as is continually done, is to make
one man responsible for a state of things which had lasted in western
Europe ever since the Emperor Theodosius declared that all men were out
of law who did not accept the Nicene Creed in the form issued by Damasus
of Rome. On the other hand, to release Calvin from his share in that tragedy
and crime by denying that he sat among the judges of the heretic, or to
allege that Servetus was slain because he conspired against the liberties of
the city, is equally unreasonable. Calvin certainly believed that the
execution of the anti-Trinitarian was right. The Protestants of France and of
Switzerland in 1903 (Nov. 1st) erected what they called a monument
expiatoire to the victim of sixteenth century religious persecution, and
placed on it an inscription in which they acknowledged their debt to the
great Reformer, and at the same time condemned his error,—surely the right
attitude to assume.[156]
Calvin did three things for Geneva, all of which went far beyond its walls.
He gave its Church a trained and tested ministry, its homes an educated
people who could give a reason for their faith, and to the whole city an

heroic soul which enabled the little town to stand forth as the Citadel and
City of Refuge for the oppressed Protestants of Europe.
The earlier preachers of the Reformed faith had been stray scholars,
converted priests and monks, pious artisans, and such like. They were for
the most part heroic men who did their work nobly. But some of them had
no real vocation for the position into which they had thrust themselves.
They had been prompted by such ignoble motives as discontent with their
condition, the desire to marry or to make legitimate irregular connections,
[157]
or dislike to all authority and wholesome restraints. They had brought
neither change of heart nor of conduct into their new surroundings, and had
become a source of danger and scandal to the small Protestant communities.
The first part of the Ordinances was meant to put an end to such a condition
of things, and aimed at giving the Reformed Church a ministry more
efficient than the old priesthood, without claiming any specially priestly
character. The ministers were to be men who believed that they were called
by the voice of God speaking to the individual soul, and this belief in a
divine vocation was to be tested and tried in a threefold way—by a
searching examination, by a call from their fellow-men in the Church, and
by a solemn institution to office.
The examination, which is expressly stated to be the most important, was
conducted by those who were already in the office of the ministry. It
concerned, first, the knowledge which the candidate had of Holy Scripture,
and of his ability to make use of it for the edification of the people; and,
second, his walk and conversation in so far as they witnessed to his power
to be an example as well as a teacher. The candidate was then presented to
the Smaller Council. He was next required to preach before the people, who
were invited to say whether his ministrations were likely to be for
edification. These three tests passed, he was then to be solemnly set apart
by the laying on of the hands of ministers, according to the usage of the
ancient Church. His examination and testing did not end with his
ordination. All the ministers of the city were commanded to meet once a
week for the discussion of the Scriptures, and at these meetings it was the
duty of every one, even the least important, to bring forward any cause of
complaint he believed to exist against any of his brethren, whether of
doctrine, or of morals, or of inefficient discharge of the duties entrusted to
his care. The pastors who worked in the villages were ordered to attend as

often as they could, and none of them were permitted to be absent beyond
one month. If the meeting of ministers failed to agree on any matter brought
before them, they were enjoined to call in the Elders to assist them; and a
final appeal was always allowed to the Signory, or civil authority. The same
rigid supervision was extended to the whole people, and in the visitations
for this purpose Elders were always associated with ministers.[158] Every
member of the little republic, surrounded by so many and powerful
enemies, was meant to be a soldier trained for spiritual as for temporal
warfare. Calvin added a spiritual side to the military training which
preserved the independence of the little mediæval city republics.
He was unwearied in his exertions to make Geneva an enlightened town.
His educational policy adopted by the Councils was stated in a series of
famous regulations for the management of the schools and College of the
city.[159] He sought out and presented to the Council the most noted scholars
he could attract to Geneva. Mathurin Cordier, the ablest preceptor that
France had produced in his generation; Beza, its most illustrious Humanist;
Castellio and Saunier, were all teachers in the city. The fame of its schools
attracted almost as many as persecution drove to take refuge within its
walls. The religious instruction of the young was carefully attended to.
Calvin’s earlier Catechism was revised, and made more suitable for the
young; and the children were so well grounded that it became a common
saying that a boy of Geneva could give an answer for his faith as ably as a
“doctor of the Sorbonne.” But what Geneva excelled in was its training for
the ministry and other learned professions. Men with the passion of learning
in their blood came from all lands—from Italy, Spain, England, Scotland,
even from Russia, and, above all, from France. Pastors educated in Geneva,
taught by the most distinguished scholars of the day, who had gained the art
of ruling others in having learned how to command themselves, went forth
from its schools to become the ministers of the struggling Protestants in the
Netherlands, in England, in Scotland, in the Rhine Provinces, and, above
all, in France. They were wise, indefatigable, fearless, ready to give their
lives for their work, extorting praise from unwilling mouths, as modest,
saintly, “with the name of Jesus ever on their lips” and His Spirit in their
hearts. What they did for France and other countries must be told elsewhere.
The once disorderly city, a prey to its own internal factions, became the
citadel of the Reformation, defying the threats of Romanist France and

Savoy, and opening its gates to the persecuted of all lands. It continued to
be so for generations, and the victims of the dragonnades of Louis XIV.
received the welcome and protection accorded to the sufferers under the
Valois in the sixteenth century. What it did for them may be best told in the
words of a refugee:

“On the next day, a Sunday, we reached a small village on a hill about
a league from Geneva, from which we could see that city with a joy
which could only be compared to the gladness with which the
Israelites beheld the Land of Canaan. It was midday when we reached
the village, and so great was our eagerness to be as soon as possible
within the city which we looked on as our Jerusalem, that we did not
wish to stay even for food. But our conductor informed us that on the
Sunday the gates of Geneva were never opened until after divine
service, that is, until after four o’clock. We had therefore to remain in
the village until about that hour, when we mounted our horses again.
When we drew near to the town we saw a large number of people
coming out. Our guide was surprised, and the more so when, arriving
at the Plain-Palais, a quarter of a league from the town, we saw coming
to meet us, three carriages escorted by halberdiers and followed by an
immense crowd of people of both sexes and of every age. As soon as
we were seen, a servant of the Magistracy approached us and prayed
us to dismount to salute respectfully ‘Their Excellencies of Geneva,’
who had come to meet us and to bid us welcome. We obeyed. The
three carriages having drawn near, there alighted from each a
magistrate and a minister, who embraced us with tears of joy and with
praises of our constancy and endurance far greater than we merited....
Their Excellencies then permitted the people to approach, and there
followed a spectacle more touching than imagination could picture.
Several of the inhabitants of Geneva had relatives suffering in the
French galleys (from which we had been delivered), and these good
people did not know whether any of them might be among our
company. So one heard a confused noise, ‘My son so and so, my
husband, my brother, are you there?’ One can imagine what
embracings welcomed any of our troop who could answer. All this
crowd of people threw itself on our necks with inexpressible transports
of joy, praising and magnifying the Lord for the manifestation of His

grace in our favour; and when Their Excellencies asked us to get on
horseback again to enter the city, we were scarcely able to obey, so
impossible did it seem to detach ourselves from the arms of these
pious and zealous brethren, who seemed afraid to lose sight of us. At
last we remounted and followed Their Excellencies, who conducted us
into the city as in triumph. A magnificent building had been erected in
Geneva to lodge citizens who had fallen into poverty. It had just been
finished and furnished, and no one had yet lived in it. Their
Excellencies thought it could have no better dedication than to serve as
our habitation. They conducted us there, and we were soon on foot in a
spacious court. The crowd of people rushed in after us. Those who had
found relatives in our company begged Their Excellencies to permit
them to take them to their houses—a request willingly granted. M.
Bosquet, one of us, had a mother and two sisters in Geneva, and they
had come to claim him. As he was my intimate friend, he begged Their
Excellencies to permit him to take me along with him, and they
willingly granted his request. Fired by this example, all the burghers,
men and women, asked Their Excellencies to allow them the same
favour of lodging these dear brethren in their own houses. Their
Excellencies having permitted some to do this, a holy jealousy took
possession of the others, who lamented and bewailed themselves,
saying that they could not be looked on as good and loyal citizens if
they were refused the same favour; so Their Excellencies had to give
way, and not one of us was left in the Maison Française, for so they
had called the magnificent building.”[160]

The narrative is that of a Protestant condemned to the galleys under Louis
XIV.; but it may serve as a picture of how Geneva acted in the sixteenth
century when the small city of 13,000 souls received and protected nearly
6000 refugees driven from many different lands for their religion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.[161]

§ 1. Marguerite d’Angoulême and the “group of Meaux.”

Perhaps no one so thoroughly represents the sentiments which inspired the
beginnings of the movement for Reformation in France as Marguerite
d’Angoulême,[162] the sister of King Francis I. A study of her letters and of
her writings—the latter being for the most part in verse—is almost essential
for a true knowledge of the aspirations of the noblest minds of her
generation. Not that she possessed creative energy or was herself a thinker
of any originality, but her soul, like some clear sensitive mirror, received
and reflected the most tremulous throb of the intellectual and religious
movements around her. She had, like many ladies of that age, devoted
herself to the New Learning. She had mastered Latin, Italian, and Spanish
in her girlhood, and later she acquired Greek and even Hebrew, in order to
study the Scriptures in their original tongues. In her the French Renaissance
of the end of the fifteenth was prolonged throughout the first half of the
sixteenth century. She was all sentiment and affection, full of that gentle
courage which soft feminine enthusiasm gives, and to her brother and more
masculine mother (Louise of Savoy)[163] she was a being to be protected
against the consequences of her own tender daring. Contemporary writers
of all parties, save the more bitter defenders of the prevalent Scholastic
Theology, have something good to say about the pure, bright, ecstatic
Queen of Navarre. One calls her the “violet in the royal garden,” and says
that she unconsciously gathered around her all the better spirits in France,
as the wild thyme attracts the bees.
Marsiglio Ficino had taught her to drink from the well of Christian
Platonism;[164] and this mysticism, which had little to do with dogma,
which allied itself naturally with the poetical sides of philosophy and
morals which suggested great if indefinite thoughts about God,—le Tout, le
Seul Nécessaire, la Seule Bonté,—the human soul and the intimate union

between the two, was perhaps the abiding part of her ever-enlarging
religious experience. Nicholas of Cusa, who tried to combine the old
Scholastic with the new thoughts of the Renaissance, taught her much
which she never unlearnt. She studied the Holy Scriptures carefully for
herself, and was never weary of discussing with others the meaning of
passages which seemed to be difficult. She listened eagerly to the preaching
of Lefèvre and Roussel, and carried on a long private correspondence with
Briçonnet, being passionately desirous, she said, to learn “the way of
salvation.”[165] Both Luther and Calvin made a strong impression upon her,
but their schemes of theology never attracted nor subjugated her
intelligence. Her sympathies were drawn forth by their disdain of Scholastic
Theology, by their denial of the supernatural powers of the priesthood, by
their proclamation of the power and of the love of God, and by their
conception that faith unites man with God—by all in their teaching which
would assimilate with the Christian mysticism to which she had given
herself with all her soul. When her religious poems are studied, it will be
found that she dwells on the infinite power of God, the mystical absorption
of the human life within the divine, and praises passionately self-sacrifice
and disdain of all earthly pleasures. She extols the Lord as the one and only
Saviour and Intercessor. She contrasts, as Luther was accustomed to do, the
Law which searches, tries, and punishes, with the Gospel which pardons the
sinner for the sake of Christ and of the work which He finished on the
Cross. She looks forward with eager hope to a world redeemed and
regenerated through the Evangel of Jesus Christ. She insists on justification
by faith, on the impossibility of salvation by works, on predestination in the
sense of absolute dependence on God in the last resort. Works are good, but
no one is saved by works; salvation comes by grace, and “is the gift of the
Most High God.” She calls the Virgin the most blessed among women,
because she had been chosen to be the mother of the “Sovereign Saviour,”
but refused her any higher place; and in her devotions she introduced an
invocation of Our Lord instead of the Salve Regina. This way of thinking
about the Blessed Virgin, combined with her indifference to the Saints and
to the Mass, and her undisguised contempt for the more superstitious
ecclesiastical ceremonies, were the chief reasons for the strong attacks
made on Marguerite by the Faculty of Theology (the Sorbonne) of Paris.
She cannot be called a Protestant, but she had broken completely with
mediæval modes of religious life and thought.

Marguerite’s letters contain such graphic glimpses, that it is possible to see
her daily life, whether at Bourges, where she held her Court as the Duchess
of Alençon, or at Nérac, where she dwelt as the Queen of Navarre. Every
hour was occupied, and was lived in the midst of company. Her Contes and
her poetry were for the most part written in her litter when she was
travelling from one place to another. Her “Household” was large even for
the times. No less than one hundred and two persons—ladies, secretaries,
almoners, physicians, etc.—made her Court; and frequently many visitors
also were present. The whole “Household,” with the visitors, met together
every forenoon in one of the halls of the Palace, a room “well-paved and
hung with tapestry,” and there the Princess commonly proposed some text
of Scripture for discussion. It was generally a passage which seemed
obscure to Marguerite; for example, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” All
were invited to make suggestions about its meaning. The hostess was
learned, and no one scrupled to quote the Scriptures in their original
languages, or to adduce the opinions of such earlier Fathers as Augustine,
Jerome, Chrysostom, or the Gregories. If it surprises us to find one or other
of the twenty valets de chambre, who were not menials and were privileged
to be present, familiar with theology, and able to quote Greek and even
Hebrew, it must not be forgotten that Marguerite’s valets de chambre
included distinguished Humanists and Reformers, to whom she extended
the protective privilege of being enrolled in her “Household.” When the
weather permitted, the whole company went for a stroll in the park after the
discussion, and then seated themselves near a “pleasant fountain” on the
turf, “so soft and delicate that they needed neither carpet nor cushions.”[166]
There one of the ladies-in-waiting (thirty dames or demoiselles belonged to
the “Household”) read aloud a tale from the Heptameron, not forgetting the
improving conversation which concludes each story. This gave rise to an
animated talk, after which they returned to the Palace. In the evening the
“Household” assembled again in a hall, fitted as a simple theatre, to witness
one of the Comedies or Pastorals which the Queen delighted to write, and in
which, through a medium as strange as the Contes, she inculcated her
mystical Christianity, and gave expression to her longings for a reformation
in the Church and society. Her Court was the precursor of the salons which
in a later age exercised such a powerful influence on French political,
literary, and social life.

Marguerite is chiefly remembered as the author of the Heptameron, which
modern sentiment cannot help regarding as a collection of scandalous, not
to say licentious, tales. The incongruity, as it appears to us, of making such
tales the vehicle of moral and even of evangelical instruction, causes us
frequently to forget the conversations which follow the stories—
conversations which generally inculcate moral truths, and sometimes
wander round the evangelical thought that man’s salvation and all the fruits
of holy living rest on the finished work of Christ, the only Saviour. “Voilà,
Mesdames, comme la foy du bon Comte ne fut vaincue par signes ne par
miracles extérieurs, sachant très bien que nous n’avons qu’un Sauveur,
lequel en disant Consummatum est, a monstré qu’il ne laissoit point à un
autre successeur pour faire notre salut.”[167] So different was the sentiment
of the sixteenth from that of the twentieth century, that Jeanne d’Albret,
puritan as she undoubtedly was, took pains that a scrupulously exact edition
of her mother’s Contes should be printed and published, for all to read and
profit by.
The Reformers with whom Marguerite was chiefly associated were called
the “group of Meaux.” Guillaume Briçonnet,[168] Bishop of Meaux, who
earnestly desired reform but dreaded revolution, had gathered round him a
band of scholars whose idea was a reformation of the Church by the
Church, in the Church, and with the Church. They were the heirs of the
aspirations of the great conciliar leaders of the fifteenth century, such as
Gerson, deeply religious men, who longed for a genuine revival of faith and
love. They hoped to reconcile the great truths of Christian dogma with the
New Learning, and at once to enlarge the sphere of Christian intelligence,
and to impregnate Humanism with Christian morality.
The man who inspired the movement and defined its aims—“to preach
Christ from the sources”—was Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Stapulensis).[169]
He had been a distinguished Humanist, and in 1507 had resolved to
consecrate his learning to a study of the Holy Scriptures. The first fruit of
this resolve was a new Latin translation of the Epistles of St. Paul (1512), in
which a revised version of the Vulgate was published along with the
traditional text. In his notes he anticipated two of Luther’s ideas—that
works have no merit apart from the grace of God, and that while there is a
Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper, there is no
transubstantiation. The Reformers of Meaux believed that the Holy

Scriptures should be in the hands of the Christian people, and Lefèvre took
Jean de Rély’s version of the Bible,—itself a revision of an old thirteenth
century French translation,—revised it, published the Gospels in June 1523,
and the whole of the New Testament before the end of the year. The Old
Testament followed in 1525. The book was eagerly welcomed by
Marguerite, and became widely known and read throughout France. The
Princess was able to write to Briçonnet that her brother and mother were
interested in the spread of the Holy Scriptures, and in the hope of a reform
of the Church.[170]
Neither Lefèvre nor Briçonnet was the man to lead a Reformation. The
Bishop was timid, and feared the “tumult”; and Lefèvre, like Marguerite,
was a Christian mystic,[171] with all the mystic’s dislike to change in
outward and fixed institutions. More radical ideas were entering France
from without. The name of Luther was known as early as 1518, and by
1520, contemporary letters tell us that his books were selling by the
hundred, and that all thinking men were studying his opinions.[172] The
ideas of Zwingli were also known, and appeared more acceptable to the
advanced thinkers in France. Some members of the group of Meaux began
to reconsider their position. The Pope’s Bull excommunicating Luther in
1520, the result of the Diet of Worms in 1521, and the declaration of the
Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) against the
opinions of Luther, and their vindication of the authority of Aristotle and
Scholastic Theology made it apparent that even modest reforms would not
be tolerated by the Church as it then existed. The Parlement of Paris
(August 1521) ordered Luther’s books to be given up.[173]
Lefèvre did not falter. He remained what he had been—a man on the
threshold of a new era who refused to enter it. One of his fellow-preachers
retracted his opinions, and began to write against his leader. The young and
fiery Guillaume Farel boldly adopted the views of the Swiss Reformers.
Briçonnet temporised. He forbade the preaching of Lutheran doctrine
within his diocese, and the circulation of the Reformer’s writings; but he
continued to protect Lefèvre, and remained true to his teaching.[174]
The energetic action of the Sorbonne and of the Parlement of Paris showed
the obstacles which lay in the path of a peaceful Reformation. The library of
Louis de Berquin was seized and condemned (June 16th, 1523), and several

of his books burnt in front of Notre Dame by the order of Parlement
(August 8th). Berquin himself was saved by the interposition of the King.
[175]
In March 1525, Jean Leclerc, a wool-carder, was whipt and branded in
Paris; and six months later was burnt at Metz for alleged outrages on
objects of reverence. The Government had to come to some decision about
the religious question.
Marguerite could write that her mother and her brother were “more than
ever well disposed towards the reformation of the Church”;[176] but neither
of them had her strong religious sentiment, and policy rather than
conviction invariably swayed their action. The Reformation promoted by
Lefèvre and believed in by Marguerite was at once too moderate and too
exacting for Francis I. It could never be a basis for an alliance with the
growing Protestantism of Germany, and it demanded a purity of individual
life ill-suited either with the personal habits of the King or with the manners
of the French Court. It is therefore not to be wondered that the policy of the
Government of Francis I. wavered between a negligent protection and a
stern repression of the French Reformers.

§ 2. Attempts to repress the Movement for Reform.

The years 1523-26 were full of troubles for France. The Italian war had
been unsuccessful. Provence had been invaded. Francis I. had been totally
defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia. Dangers of various kinds within
France had also confronted the Government. Bands of marauders—les
aventuriers[177]—had pillaged numerous districts; and so many
conflagrations had taken place that people believed they were caused by
emissaries of the public enemies of France. Louise of Savoy, the Queen-
Mother, and Regent during her son’s captivity in Madrid, had found it
necessary to conciliate the formidable powers of the Parlement of Paris and
of the Sorbonne. Measures were taken to suppress the printing of Lutheran
and heretical books, and the Parlement appointed a commission to discover,
try, and punish heretics. The result was a somewhat ineffective persecution.
[178]
The preachers of Meaux had to take refuge in Strassburg, and Lefèvre’s
translation of the Scriptures was publicly burnt.
When the King returned from his imprisonment at Madrid (March 1525), he
seemed to take the side of the Reformers. The Meaux preachers came back

to France, and Lefèvre himself was made the tutor to the King’s youngest
son. In 1528-29 the great French Council of Sens met to consider the state
of the Church. It reaffirmed most of the mediæval positions, and, in
opposition to the teachings of Protestants, declared the unity, infallibility,
and visibility of the Church, the authority of Councils, the right of the
Church to make canonical regulations, fasts, the celibacy of priests, the
seven sacraments, the Mass, purgatory, the veneration of saints, the worship
of images, and the Scholastic doctrines of free will and faith and works. It
called on civil rulers to execute the censures of the Church on heretics and
schismatics. It also published a series of reforms necessary—most of which
were already contained in the canon law.
While the Council was sitting, the Romanists of France were startled with
the news that a statue of the Blessed Virgin had been beheaded and
otherwise mutilated. It was the first manifestation of the revolutionary spirit
of the Reformation in France. The King was furious. He caused a new
statue to be made in silver, and gave his sanction to the renewal of the
persecutions (May 31st, 1528). Four years later his policy altered. He
desired alliances with the English and German Protestants; one of the
Reformers of Meaux preached in the Louvre during Lent (1533), and some
doctors of the Sorbonne, who accused the King and Queen of Navarre of
heresy, were banished from Paris. In spite of the ferment caused by the
Evangelical address of Nicolas Cop, and the flight of Cop and of Calvin, the
real author of the address, the King still seemed to favour reform.
Evangelical sermons were again preached in the Louvre, and the King
spoke of a conference on the state of religion within France.
The affair of the Placards caused another storm. On the morning of Oct.
18th, 1534, the citizens of Paris found that broadsides or placards, attacking
in very strong language the ceremony of the Mass, had been affixed to the
walls of the principal streets. These placards affirmed that the sacrifice of
Christ upon the Cross was perfect and unique, and therefore could never be
repeated; that it was sheer idolatry to say that the corporeal presence of
Christ was enclosed within the wafer, “a man of twenty or thirty years in a
morsel of paste”; that transubstantiation was a gross error; that the Mass
had been perverted from its true meaning, which is to be a memorial of the
sacrifice and death of our Lord; and that the solemn ceremony had become
a time “of bell-ringings, shoutings, singing, waving of lamps and swinging

of incense pots, after the fashion of sorcerers.” The violence of language
was extreme. “The Pope and all his vermin of cardinals, of bishops, of
priests, of monks and other hypocrites, sayers of the Mass, and all those
who consent thereto,” were liars and blasphemers. The author of this
broadside was a certain Antoine Marcourt, who had fled from France and
taken refuge in Neuchâtel. The audacity of the men who had posted the
placards in Paris and in other towns,—Orléans, Blois, Amboise,—and had
even fixed one on the door of the King’s bedchamber, helped to rouse the
Romanists to frenzy. The Parlement and the University demanded loudly
that extreme measures should be taken to crush the heretics;[179] and
everywhere expiatory processions were formed to protest against the
sacrilege. The King himself and the great nobles of the Court took part in
one in January,[180] and during that month more than thirty-five Lutherans
were arrested, tried, and burnt. Several well-known Frenchmen (seventy-
three at least), among them Clement Marot and Mathurin Cordier, fled the
country, and their possessions were confiscated.
After this outburst of persecution the King’s policy again changed. He was
once more anxious for an alliance with the Protestants of Germany. An
amnesty was proclaimed for all save the “Sacramentarians,” i.e. the
followers of Zwingli. A few of the exiled Frenchmen returned, among them
Clement Marot. The Chancellor of France, Antoine du Bourg, went the
length of inviting the German theologians to come to France for the purpose
of sharing in a religious conference, and adhered to his proposal in spite of
the protests of the Sorbonne. But nothing came of it. The German Protestant
theologians refused to risk themselves on French soil; and the exiled
Frenchmen mistrusted the King and his Chancellor. The amnesty, however,
deserves remark, because it called forth the letter of Calvin to Francis I.
which forms the “dedication” or preface to his Christian Institution.
The work of repression was resumed with increased severity. Royal edicts
and mandates urging the extirpation of heresy followed each other in rapid
succession—Edict to the Parlement of Toulouse (Dec. 16th, 1538), to the
Parlements of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Rouen (June 24th, 1539); a general
edict issued from Fontainebleau (June 1st, 1540); an edict to the Parlement
of Toulouse (Aug. 29th, 1542); mandats to the Parlements of Paris,
Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, and Rouen (Aug. 30th, 1542). The general
Edict of Fontainebleau was one of exceptional severity. It was intended to

introduce a more summary procedure in heresy trials, and enjoined officials
to proceed against all persons tainted with heresy, even against ecclesiastics
or those who had the “benefit of clergy”; the right of appeal was denied to
those suspected; negligent judges were threatened with the King’s
displeasure; and the ecclesiastical courts were urged to show greater zeal,
and to take advantage of the powers given to the civil courts. “Every loyal
subject,” the edict said, “must denounce heretics, and employ all means to
root them out, just as all men are bound to run to help to extinguish a public
conflagration.” This edict, slightly modified by the Parlement of Paris (July
1543) by enlarging the powers of the ecclesiastical courts, remained in force
in France for the nine following years. Yet in spite of its thoroughness,
succeeding edicts and mandats declare that heresy was making rapid
progress in France.
The Sorbonne and the Parlements (especially those of Paris and Aix) urged
on the persecution of the “Lutherans.” The former drafted a series of
twenty-five articles (a refutation of the 1541 edition of Calvin’s Institution),
which were meant to assert concisely the dogma of the Church, and to deny
whatever the Reformers taught prejudicial to the doctrines and practices of
the mediæval Church. These articles were approved by the King and his
Privy Council, who ordered them to be published throughout the whole
kingdom, and gave instructions to deal with all who preached or taught
anything contrary or repugnant to them. This ordinance was at once
registered by the Parlement of Paris. Thus all the powers of the realm
committed themselves to a struggle to extirpate the Reformed teaching, and
were armed with a test which was at once clear and comprehensive. Not
content with this, the Sorbonne began a list of prohibited books (1542-43)
—a list containing the works of Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Clement
Marot, and the translations of scripture edited by Robert Estienne, and the
Parlement issued a severe ordinance against all Protestant propaganda by
means of printing or the selling of books (July 1542).
These various ordinances for the extirpation of heresy were applied
promptly and rigorously, and the fires of persecution were soon kindled all
over France. The place Maubert was the scene of the martyrdoms in Paris.
There were no great auto-da-fés, but continual mention is made of burning
two or three martyrs at once. Two acts of persecution cast a dark stain on

the last years of Francis I.—the slaughter of the Waldenses of the Durance
in 1545, and the martyrdom of the “fourteen of Meaux.”
A portion of Provence, skirting the Durance where that river is about to
flow into the Rhone, had been almost depopulated in the fourteenth century,
and the landowners had invited peasants from the Alps to settle within their
territories. The incomers were Waldenses; their religion was guaranteed
protection, and their industry and thrift soon covered the desolate region
with fertile farms. When the Reformation movement had established itself
in Germany and Switzerland, these villagers were greatly interested. They
drew up a brief statement of what they believed, and sent it to the leading
Reformers, accompanied by a number of questions on matters of religion.
They received long answers from Bucer and from Oecolampadius, and,
having met in conference (Sept. 1532) at Angrogne in Piedmont, they
drafted a simple confession of faith based on the replies of the Reformers to
their questions. It was natural that they should view the progress of the
Reformation within France with interest, and that they should contribute
500 crowns to defray the expense of printing a new translation of the
Scriptures into French by Robert Olivétan. Freedom to practise their
religion had been granted for two centuries to the inhabitants of the thirty
Waldensian villages, and they conceived that in exhibiting their sympathy
with French Protestantism they were acting within their ancient rights. Jean
de Roma, Inquisitor for Provence, thought otherwise. In 1532 he began to
exhort the villagers to abjure their opinions; and, finding his entreaties
without effect, he set on foot a severe persecution. The Waldenses appealed
to the King, who sent a commission to inquire into the matter, with the
result that Jean de Roma was compelled to flee the country.
The persecution was renewed in 1535 by the Archbishop and Parlement of
Aix, who cited seventeen of the people of Merindol, one of the villages,
before them on a charge of heresy. When they failed to appear, the
Parlement published (Nov. 18th, 1540) the celebrated Arrêt de Merindol,
which sentenced the seventeen to be burnt at the stake. The Waldenses
again appealed to the King, who pardoned the seventeen on the condition
that they should abjure their heresy within three months (Feb. 8th, 1541).
There was a second appeal to the King, who again protected the Waldenses;
but during the later months of 1541 the Parlement of Aix sent to His
Majesty the false information that the people of Merindol were in open

insurrection, and were threatening to sack the town of Marseilles. Upon
this, Francis, urged thereto by Cardinal de Tournon, recalled his protection,
and ordered all the Waldenses to be exterminated (Jan. 1st, 1545). An army
was stealthily organised, and during seven weeks of slaughter, amid all the
accompaniments of treachery and brutality, twenty-two of the thirty
Waldensian villages were utterly destroyed, between three and four
thousand men and women were slain, and seven hundred men sent to the
galleys. Those who escaped took refuge in Switzerland.[181]
The persecution at Meaux (1546) was more limited in extent, but was
accompanied by such tortures that it formed a fitting introduction to the
severities of the reign of Henri II.
The Reformed at Meaux had organised themselves into a congregation
modelled on that of the French refugees in Strassburg. They had chosen
Pierre Leclerc to be their pastor, and one of their number, Étienne Mangin,
gave his house for the meetings of the congregation. The authorities heard
of the meetings, and on Sept 8th, 1546, a sudden visit was made to the
house, and sixty-one persons were arrested and brought before the
Parlement of Paris. Their special crime was that they had engaged in the
celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The sentence of the Court declared that
the Bishop of Meaux had shown culpable negligence in permitting such
meetings; that the evidence indicated that there were numbers of
“Lutherans” and heretics in Meaux besides those brought before it, and that
all such were to be sought out; that all books in the town which concerned
the Christian religion were to be deposited in the record-office within eight
days; that special sermons were to be delivered and expiatory processions
organised; and that the house of Étienne Mangin was to be razed to the
ground, and a chapel in honour of the Holy Sacrament erected on the site. It
condemned fourteen of the accused to be burnt alive, after having suffered
the severest tortures which the law permitted; five to be hung up by the
armpits to witness the execution, and then to be scourged and imprisoned;
others to witness the execution with cords round their necks and with their
heads bare, to ask pardon for their crime, to take part in an expiatory
procession, and to listen to a sermon on the adoration due to the Body of
Christ present in the Holy Sacrament. A few, mostly women, were
acquitted.[182]

Francis I. died in March 1547. The persistent persecution which had marked
the later years of his reign had done little or nothing to quench the growing
Protestantism of France. It had only succeeded in driving it beneath the
surface.
Henry II. never indulged in the vacillating policy of his father. From the
beginning of his reign he set himself resolutely to combat the Reformation.
His favourite councillors—his all-powerful mistress, Diane of Poitiers; his
chief Minister, the Constable Montmorency, in high repute for his skill in
the arts of war and of government; the Guises, a great family, originally
belonging to Lorraine, who had risen to power in France—were all strong
supporters of the Roman Catholic religion, and resolute to destroy the
growing Protestantism of France. The declared policy of the King was to
slay the Reformation by attacking it through every form of legal
suppression that could be devised.

§ 3. Change in the Character of the Movement for Reform.

The task was harder than it had been during the reign of Francis. In spite of
the persecutions, the adherents of the new faith had gone on increasing in a
wonderful way. Many of the priests and monks had been converted to
Evangelical doctrines. They taught them secretly and openly; and they
could expose in a telling way the corruptions of the Church, having known
them from the inside. Schoolmasters, if one may judge from the arréts of
the Parlements, were continually blamed for dissuading their pupils from
going to Mass, and for corrupting the youth by instructing them in the
“false and pernicious doctrines of Geneva.” Many Colleges were named as
seed-beds of the Reformation—Angers, Bourges, Fontenay, La Rochelle,
Loudun, Niort, Nimes, and Poitiers. The theatre itself became an agent for
reform when the corruptions of the Church and the morals of the clergy
were attacked in popular plays. The refugees in Strassburg, Geneva, and
Lausanne spared no pains to send the Evangelical doctrines to their
countrymen. Ardent young Frenchmen, trained abroad, took their lives in
their hand, and crept quietly through the length and breadth of France. They
met converts and inquirers in solitary suburbs, in cellars of houses, on
highways, and by the rivers. The records of the ecclesiastical police enable
us to trace the spread of the Reformation along the great roads and

waterways of France. The missioners changed their names frequently to
elude observation. Some, with a daring beyond their fellows, did not
hesitate to visit the towns and preach almost openly to the people. The
propaganda carried on by colporteurs was scarcely less successful. These
were usually young men trained at Geneva or Strassburg. They carried their
books in a pack on their backs, and hawked them in village and town,
describing their contents, and making little sermons for the listeners.
Among the notices of seizures we find such titles as the following:—Les
Colloques of Erasmus, La Fontaine de Vie (a selection of scriptural
passages translated into French), the Livre de vraye et parfaicte oraison (a
translation of extracts from Luther’s writings), the Cinquante-deux
psaumes, the Catéchisme de Genève, Prières ecclésiastiques avec la
manière d’administrer les sacrements, an Alphabet chrétien and an
Instruction chrétienne pour les petits enfants. No edicts against printing
books which had not been submitted to the ecclesiastical authorities were
able to put an end to this secret colportage.
In these several ways the Evangelical faith was spread abroad, and before
the death of Francis there was not a district in France with the single
exception of Brittany which had not its secret Protestants, while many parts
of the country swarmed with them.

§ 4. Calvin and his Influence in France.

The Reformation in France had been rapidly changing its character since
1536, the year in which Lefèvre died, and in which Calvin’s Christian
Institution was published. It was no longer a Christian mysticism
supplemented by a careful study of the Scriptures; it had advanced beyond
the stage of individual followers of Luther or Zwingli; it had become
united, presenting a solid phalanx to its foes; it had rallied round a
manifesto which was at once a completed scheme of doctrine, a prescribed
mode of worship, and a code of morals; it had found a leader who was both
a master and a commander-in-chief. The publication of the Christian
Institution had effected this. The young man whom the Town Council of
Geneva could speak of as “a certain Frenchman” (Gallus quidam) soon took
a foremost place among the leaders of the whole Reformation movement,
and moulded in his plastic hands the Reformation in France.

Calvin’s early life and his work in Geneva have already been described; but
his special influence on France must not pass unnoticed.[183] He had an
extraordinary power over his co-religionists in his native land.[184] He was a
Frenchman—one of themselves; no foreigner speaking an unfamiliar
tongue; no enemy of the Fatherland to follow whom might seem to be
unpatriotic. It is true that his fixed abode lay beyond the confines of France;
but distance, which gave him freedom of action, made him the more
esteemed. He was the apostle who wrote “to all that be in France, beloved
of God, called to be saints.”
While still a student, Calvin had shown that he possessed, besides a
marvellous memory, an acute and penetrating intellect, with a great faculty
for assimilating ideas and modes of thought; but he lacked what may be
called artistic imagination,[185] and neither poetry nor art seemed to strike
any responsive chord in his soul. His conduct was always straightforward,
irreproachable, and dignified; he was by education and breeding, if not by
descent, the polished French gentleman, and was most at home with men
and women of noble birth. His character was serious, with little playfulness,
little vivacity, but with a wonderful power of sympathy. He was reserved,
somewhat shy, slow to make intimate friends, but once made the friendships
lasted for life. At all periods of age, boy, student, man of letters, leader of a
great party, he seems to have been a centre of attraction and of deferential
trust. The effect of this mysterious charm was felt by others besides those of
his own age. His professor, Mathurin Cordier, became his devoted disciple.
Melanchthon wished that he might die with his head on Calvin’s breast.
Luther, in spite of his suspicion of everything that came from Switzerland,
was won to love and trust him. And Knox, the most rugged and independent
of men, acknowledged Calvin as his master, consulted him in every doubt
and difficulty, and on all occasions save one meekly followed his counsels.
He loved children, and had them at his house for Christmas trees; but (and
this is characteristically French) always addressed them with ceremonious
politeness, as if they were grown men and women deserving as much
consideration as himself. It was this trait that captivated de Bèze when he
was a boy of twelve.
Calvin was a democrat intellectually and by silent principle. This appears
almost everywhere in his private writings, and was noted by such a keen

observer as Tavannes. It was never more unconsciously displayed than in
the preface or dedication of the Christian Institution.

“This preface, instead of pleading with the King on behalf of the
Reformation, places the movement right before him, and makes him
see it. Its tone throughout firm and dignified, calm and stately when
Calvin addresses Francis I. directly, more bitter and sarcastic when he
is speaking of theologians, la pensée et la forme du style toutes
vibrantes du ton biblique, the very simplicity and perfect frankness of
the address, give the impression of one who is speaking on equal terms
with his peer. All suggest the Christian democrat without a trace of the
revolutionary.”[186]

The source of his power—logic impregnated by the passion of conviction—
is so peculiarly French that perhaps only his countrymen can fully
understand and appreciate it, and they have not been slow to do so.
All these characteristic traits appealed to them. His passion for equality, as
strong as the Apostle Paul’s, compelled him to take his followers into his
confidence, to make them apprehend what he knew to the innermost
thoughts of his heart. It forced him to exhibit the reasons for his faith to all
who cared to know them, to arrange them in a logical order which would
appeal to their understanding, and his passion of conviction assured him
and them that what he taught was the very truth of God. Then he was a very
great writer,[187] one of the founders of modern French prose, the most
exquisite literary medium that exists, a man made to arrest the attention of
the people. He wrote all his important works in French for his countrymen,
as well as in Latin for the learned world. His language and style were fresh,
clear, and simple; without affected elegance or pedantic display of
erudition; full of vigour and verve; here, caustic wit which attracted; there,
eloquence which spoke to the hearts of his readers because it throbbed with
burning passion and strong emotion.
It is unlikely that all his disciples in France appreciated his doctrinal system
in its details. The Christian Institution appealed to them as the strongest
protest yet made against the abuses and scandals of the Roman Church, as
containing a code of duties owed to God and man, as exhibiting an ideal of
life pure and lofty, as promising everlasting blessedness for the called and

chosen and faithful. “It satisfied at one and the same time the intellects
which demanded logical proof and the souls which had need of
enthusiasm.”
It has been remarked that Calvin’s theology was less original and effective
than his legislation or policy.[188] The statement seems to overlook the
peculiar service which was rendered to the Reformation movement by the
Institution. The Reformation was a rebellion against the external authority
of the mediæval Church; but every revolt, even that against the most
flagrant abuses and the most corrupt rule, carries in it seeds of evil which
must be slain if any real progress is to be made. For it instinctively tends to
sweep away all restraints—those that are good and necessary as well as
those that are bad and harmful. The leaders of every movement for reform
have a harder battle to fight against the revolutionaries in their following
than against their avowed opponents. At the root of the Reformation of the
sixteenth century lay an appeal from man to God—from the priest, granting
or withholding absolution in the confessional, to God making the sinner,
who turns from his sins and has faith in the person and work of Christ,
know in his heart that he is pardoned; from the decision of Popes and
Councils to the decrees of God revealed in His Holy Word. This appeal was
in the nature of the case from the seen to the unseen, and therein lay the
difficulty; for unless this unseen could be made visible to the eye of the
intelligence to such a degree that the restraining authority which it
possessed could impress itself on the will, there was risk of its proving to be
no restraining authority whatsoever, and of men fancying that they had been
left to be a law unto themselves. What the Christian Institution did for the
sixteenth century was to make the unseen government and authority of God,
to which all must bow, as visible to the intellectual eye of faith as the
mechanism of the mediæval Church had been to the eye of sense. It
proclaimed that the basis of all Christian faith was the Word of God
revealed in the Holy Scriptures; it taught the absolute dependence of all
things on God Himself immediately and directly; it declared that the sin of
man was such that, apart from the working of the free grace of God, there
could be neither pardon nor amendment, nor salvation; and it wove all these
thoughts into a logical unity which revealed to the intellectual eye of its
generation the “House of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
Men as they gazed saw that they were in the immediate presence of the
authority of God Himself, directly responsible to Him; that they could test

“the Pope’s House” by this divine archetype; that it was their duty to reform
all human institutions, ecclesiastical or political, in order to bring them into
harmony with the divine vision. It made men know that to separate
themselves from the visible mediæval Church was neither to step outside
the sphere of the purpose of God making for their redemption, nor to free
themselves from the duties which God requires of man.
The work which Calvin did for his co-religionists in France was immense.
He carried on a constant correspondence with them; he sustained their
courage; he gave their faith a sublime exaltation. When he heard of a
French Romanist who had begun to hesitate, he wrote to him combining
persuasion with instruction. He pleaded the cause of the Reformation with
its nominal supporters. He encouraged the weak. He sent letters to the
persecuted. He forwarded short theological treatises to assist those who had
got into controversies concerning their faith. He advised the organisation of
congregations. He recommended energetic pastors. He warned slothful
ministers.

“We must not think,” he says, “that our work is confined within such
narrow limits that our task is ended when we have preached sermons ...
it is our part to maintain a vigilant oversight of those committed to our
care, and take the greatest pains to guard from evil those whose blood
will one day be demanded from us if they are lost through our
negligence.”[189]

He answered question after question about the difficulty of reconciling the
demands of the Christian life with what was required by the world around
—a matter which pressed hard on the consciences of men and women who
belonged to a religious minority in a great Roman Catholic kingdom. He
was no casuist. He wrote to Madame de Cany, the sister of the Duchess
d’Étampes, that “no one, great or small, ought to believe themselves exempt
from suffering for the sake of our sovereign King.” He was listened to with
reverence; for he was not a counsellor who advised others to do what he
was not prepared to do himself. He could say, “Be ye followers of me, as I
am of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Frenchmen and Frenchwomen knew that the
master whom they obeyed, the director they consulted, to whom they
whispered the secrets of their souls, lived the hardest and most ascetic life

of any man in Europe,—scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping; that his frail
body was kept alive by the energy of his indomitable soul.
Frenchmen of varying schools of thought have not been slow to recognise
the secret of the power of their great countryman. Jules Michelet says:

“Among the martyrs, with whom Calvin constantly conversed in spirit,
he became a martyr himself; he lived and felt like a man before whom
the whole earth disappears, and who tunes his last Psalm his whole eye
fixed upon the eye of God, because he knows that on the following
morning he may have to ascend the pyre.”

Ernest Renan is no less emphatic:

“It is surprising that a man who appears to us in his life and writings so
unsympathetic should have been the centre of an immense movement
in his generation, and that this harsh and severe tone should have
exercised so great an influence on the minds of his contemporaries.
How was it, for example, that one of the most distinguished women of
her time, Renée of France, in her Court at Ferrara, surrounded by the
flower of European wits, was captivated by that stern master, and by
him drawn into a course that must have been so thickly strewn with
thorns? This kind of austere seduction is exercised only by those who
work with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympathetic
ardour which was one of the secrets of Luther’s success, lacking the
charm, the perilous, languishing tenderness of Francis de Sales, Calvin
succeeded, in an age and in a country which called for a reaction
towards Christianity, simply because he was the most Christian man of
his generation.”

Thus it was that all those in France who felt the need of intimate fellowship
with God, all to whom a religion, which was at once inflexible in matters of
moral living and which appealed to their reasoning faculties, was a
necessity, hailed the Christian Institution as the clearest manifesto of their
faith, and grouped themselves round the young author (Calvin was barely
twenty-six when he wrote it) as their leader. Those also who suffered under
the pressure of a despotic government, and felt the evils of a society
constituted to uphold the privileges of an aristocracy, learnt that in a

neighbouring country there was a city which had placed itself under the rule
of the Word of God; where everyone joined in a common worship attractive
from its severe simplicity; where the morals, public and private, were pure;
where the believers selected their pastors and the people their rulers; where
there were neither masters nor subjects; where the ministers of religion
lived the lives of simple laymen, and were distinguished from them only by
the exercise of their sacred service. They indulged in the dream that all
France might be fashioned after the model of Geneva.
Many a Frenchman who was dissatisfied with the condition of things in
France, but had come to no personal decision to leave the mediæval
Church, could not help contrasting what he saw around him with the life
and aspiration of those “of the religion,”[190] as the French Protestants
began to be called. They saw themselves confronted by a religion full of
mysteries inaccessible to reason, expressing itself even in public worship in
a language unintelligible to most of the worshippers, full of pomp, of
luxury, of ceremonies whose symbolical meaning had been forgotten. They
saw a clergy commonplace and ignorant, or aristocratic and indifferent; a
nobility greedy and restless; a Court whose luxurious display and scandals
were notorious; royal mistresses and faithless husbands and wives. Almost
everywhere we find a growing tendency to contrast the purity of
Protestantism and the corruption of Roman Catholicism. It found outcome
in the famous scene in the Parlement of Paris (1559), when Antoine de
Bourg, son of a former Chancellor, advocated the total suspension of the
persecution against those “who were called heretics,” and enforced his
opinion by contrasting the blasphemies and scandals of the Court with the
morality and the purity of the lives of those who were being sent to the
stake,—a speech for which he afterwards lost his life.[191]
It was this growing united Protestantism which Henry II. and his advisers
had determined to crush by the action of the legislative authority.

§ 5. Persecution under Henry II.[192]

The repressive legal measures introduced by Francis I. were retained, and a
new law against blasphemy (prepared, no doubt, during the last days of
Francis) was published five days after the King’s death (April 5th, 1547).
But more was believed to be necessary. So a series of edicts, culminating in

the Edict of Chateaubriand, were published, which aimed at uniting all the
forces of the kingdom to extirpate the Reformed faith.
On October 8th, 1547, a second criminal court was added to the Parlement
of Paris, to deal solely with cases of heresy. This was the famous Chambre
Ardente. It was ordered to sit continuously, even during the ordinary
Parliamentary vacancies in August and September; and its first session
lasted from Dec. 1547 to Jan. 1550, during which time it must have passed
more than five hundred judgments. The clergy felt that this special court
took from them one of their privileges, the right of trying all cases of
heresy. They petitioned against it. A compromise was arranged (Edict of
Nov. 19th, 1549), by which all cases of simple heresy (cas communes) were
to be sent to the ecclesiastical courts, while cases of heresy accompanied by
public scandal (cas privilégiés) were to be judged in the civil courts. In
practice it usually happened that all cases of heresy went first before the
ecclesiastical courts and, after judgment there, those which were believed to
be attended by public scandal (the largest number) were sent on to the civil
courts. These measures were not thought sufficient, and the Edict of
Chateaubriand (June 27th, 1551) codified and extended all the various legal
measures taken for the defence of the Roman Catholic faith.
The edict was lengthy, and began with a long preamble, which declared that
in spite of all measures of repression, heresy was increasing; that it was a
pestilence “so contagious that it had infected most of the inhabitants, men,
women, and even little children, in many of the towns and districts of the
kingdom,” and asked every loyal subject to aid the Government in
extirpating the plague. It provided that, as before, all cases of simple heresy
should be judged in the ecclesiastical courts, and that heresy accompanied
with public scandal should be sent to the civil courts of the Parlements. It
issued stringent regulations about the publication and sale of books;
forbidding the introduction into France of volumes from Protestant
countries; forbidding the printing of books which had not passed the censor
of the Faculty of Theology, and all books published anonymously; and
ordering an examination of all printing houses and bookshops twice in the
year. Private persons who did not inform against heretics were liable to be
considered heretics themselves, and punished as such; and when they did
denounce them they were to receive one-third of the possessions of the
persons condemned. Parents were charged “by the pity, love, and charity

which they owed to their children,” not to engage any teachers who might
be “suspect”; no one was permitted to teach in school or college who was
not certified to be orthodox; and masters were made responsible for their
servants. Intercourse with those who had taken refuge in Geneva was
prohibited, and the goods of the refugees were confiscated. All Catholics,
and more especially persons of rank and in authority, were required to give
the earnest example of attending carefully to outward observances of
religion, and in particular to kneel in adoration of the Host.
The edict was registered on Sept. 3rd, 1551, and immediately put in force.
Six years later, the King had to confess that its stringent provisions had
failed to arrest the spread of the Protestant faith. He proposed to establish
the Inquisition in France, moved thereto by the Cardinal of Lorraine and
Pope Paul IV.; and was prevented only by the strenuous opposition of his
Parlement.[193] He had to content himself with issuing the Edict of
Compiègne (1557), which, while nominally leaving trials for heresy in the
hands of the ecclesiastical courts, practically handed them over to the civil
courts, where the judges were not allowed to inflict any lesser punishment
than death. They were permitted to increase the penalty by inflicting torture,
or to mitigate it by strangling the victims before burning them.
Armed with this legislation, the work of hunting out the Reformed was
strenuously carried on. Certain prisons were specially reserved for the
Protestant martyrs—the Conciergerie, which was part of the building of the
Palace, and the Grand Châtelet, which faced it on the opposite bank of the
Seine. They soon overflowed, and suspects were confined in the Bastille, in
the Petit Châtelet, and in episcopal prisons. The cells of the Conciergerie
were below the level of the river, and water oozed from the walls; the Grand
Châtelet was noted for its terrible dungeons, so small that the prisoner could
neither stand upright nor lie at full length on the floor. Diseases decimated
the victims; the plague slew sixty who were waiting for trial in the Grand
Châtelet in 1547. Few were acquitted; almost all, once arrested, suffered
death and torture.[194]

§ 6. The Organisation of the French Protestant Church.

It was during these years of terrible persecution that the Protestant Church
of France organised itself—feeling the need for unity the better to sustain

the conflict in which it was engaged, and to assist its weaker members.
Calvin was unwearied in urging on this work of organisation. With the fire
of a prophet and the foresight of a statesman he insisted on the necessity of
unity during the storm and strain of a time of persecution. He had already
shown what form the ecclesiastical organisation ought to take.[195] He
proposed to revive the simple threefold ministry of the Church of the early
centuries—a congregation ruled by a bishop or pastor, a session of elders,
and a body of deacons. This was adopted by the French Protestants. A group
of believers, a minister, a “consistory” of elders and deacons, regular
preaching, and the sacraments duly administered, made a Church properly
constituted. The minister was the chief; he preached; he administered the
sacraments; he presided at the “consistory.” The “consistory” was
composed of elders charged with the spiritual oversight of the community,
and of deacons who looked after the poor and the sick. The elders and the
deacons were chosen by the members of the congregation; and the minister
by the elders and the deacons. An organised Church did not come into
existence all at once as a rule, and a distinction was drawn between an
église plantée, and an église dressée. The former was in an embryonic state,
with a pastor, it might be, but no consistory; or it might be only a group of
people who welcomed the occasional services of a wandering missioner, or
held simple services without any definite leader.
The year 1555 may be taken as the date when French Protestantism began
to organise Churches. It is true that a few had been established earlier—at
Meaux in 1546 and at Nimes in 1547, but the congregations had been
dispersed by persecution. Before 1555 the Protestants of France had been
for the most part solitary Bible students, or little companies meeting
together for common worship without any organisation.
Paris set the example. A small company of believers had been accustomed
to meet in the lodging of the Sieur de la Ferriere, near the Pré-aux-Clercs.
The birth of a child hastened matters. The father explained that he could not
go outside France to seek a pure baptism, and that his conscience would not
permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Roman Church.
After prayer the company resolved to constitute themselves into a Church.
Jean le Maçon was called to be the minister or pastor; elders and deacons
were chosen; and the organisation was complete.[196] It seemed as if all

Protestant France had been waiting for the signal, and organised Churches
sprang up everywhere.
Crespin names thirteen Churches, completely organised in the manner of
the Church of Paris, founded between 1555 and 1557—Meaux, Poitiers,
Angers, les Iles de Saintonge, Agen, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois,
Tours, Lyon, Orléans, and Rouen. He adds that there were others.
Documentary evidence now available enables us to give thirty-six more, all
dressées, or completely organised, with a consistory or kirk-session, before
1560. One hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France from Geneva
before 1567. The history of these congregations during the reign of Henry
II. was full of tragic and dramatic incidents.[197] They existed in the midst
of a population which was for the most part fanatically Romanist, easily
excited by priests and monks, who poured forth violent addresses from the
pulpits of neighbouring churches. Law-courts, whether in the capital or in
the provinces, the public officials, all loyal subjects of the King, were
invited, commanded by the Edict of Chateaubriand, to ferret out and hunt
down those suspected of Protestant sympathies. To fail to make a reverence
when passing a crucifix, to speak unguardedly against an ecclesiastical
ceremony, to exhibit the slightest sympathy for a Protestant martyr, to be
found in possession of a book printed in Geneva, was sufficient to provoke
a denunciation, an arrest, a trial which must end in torture and death.
Protestants were compelled to worship in cellars, to creep stealthily to their
united devotions; like the early Christians during the persecutions under
Decius or Diocletian, they had to meet at midnight; and these midnight
assemblies gave rise to the same infamous reports about their character
which the Jews spread abroad regarding the secret meetings of the
Christians of the first three centuries.[198] Every now and then they were
discovered, as in the incident of the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris, and
wholesale arrests and martyrdoms followed.
The organisation of the faithful into Churches had done much for French
Protestantism in bestowing upon them the power which association gives;
but more was needed to weld them into one. In 1558, doctrinal differences
arose in the congregation at Poitiers. The Church in Paris was appealed to,
and its minister, Antoine de Chandieu, went to Poitiers to assist at the
celebration of the Holy Supper, and to heal the dispute. There, it is said, the
idea of a Confession of Faith for the whole Church was suggested. Calvin

was consulted, but did not approve. Notwithstanding, on May 25th, 1559, a
number of ministers and elders, coming from all parts of France, and
representing, according to a contemporary document whose authority is
somewhat doubtful, sixty-six Churches,[199] met in Paris for conference.
Three days were spent in deliberations, under the presidency of Morel, one
of the Parisian ministers. This was the First National Synod of the French
Protestant Church. It compiled a Confession of Faith and a Book of
Discipline.
The Confession of Faith[200] (Confession de Foi faite d’un commun accord
par les François, qui desirent vivre selon la pureté de l’évangile de notre
Seigneur Jésus Christ) consists of forty articles. It was revised more than
once by subsequent Synods, but may still be called the Confession of the
French Protestant Church. It was based on a short Confession drafted by
Calvin in 1557, and embodied in a letter to the King on behalf of his
persecuted subjects. “It seemed useful,” one of the members of the Synod
wrote to Calvin, “to add some articles to your Confession, and to modify it
slightly on some points.” Probably out of deference to Calvin’s objection to
a creed for the whole Church, it was resolved to keep it secret for some
time. The resolution was in vain. The Confession was in print, and known
before the end of 1559.
The Book of Discipline (Discipline ecclésiastique des églises réformées de
France) regulated the organisation and the discipline of the Churches. It
was that kind of ecclesiastical polity which has become known as
Presbyterian, but which might be better called Conciliar. A council called
the Consistory, consisting of the minister or ministers, elders, and deacons,
ruled the congregation. Congregations were formed into groups, over which
was the Colloquy, composed of representatives from the Consistories; over
the Colloquies were the Provincial Synods; and over all the General or
National Synod. Rules were laid down about how discipline was to be
exercised. It was stated clearly that no Church could claim a primacy over
the others. All ministers were required to sign the Confession of Faith, and
to acknowledge and submit to the ecclesiastical discipline.[201]
It is interesting to see how in a country whose civil rule was becoming
gradually more absolutist, this “Church under the Cross” framed for itself a
government which reconciled, more thoroughly perhaps than has ever been

done since, the two principles of popular rights and supreme central control.
Its constitution has spread to Holland, Scotland, and to the great American
Churches. Their ecclesiastical polity came much more from Paris than from
Geneva.

§ 7. Reaction against Persecution.

An attentive study of the sources of the history of the period shows that the
excessive severity of King and Court towards Protestants had excited a
fairly widespread reaction in favour of the persecuted, and had also
impelled the King to action which was felt by many to be unconstitutional.
This sympathy with the persecuted and repugnance to the arbitrary exercise
of kingship did much to mould the Huguenot movement which lay in the
immediate future.
The protests against the institution of the Chambre Ardente, the refusal of
the Parlement of Paris to register the edict establishing the Inquisition in
France, and the hesitancy to put in execution extraordinary powers
bestowed on French Cardinals for the punishing of heretics by the Bull of
Pope Paul IV. (Feb. 26th, 1557), may all be ascribed to the jealousy with
which the Courts, ecclesiastical and civil, viewed any interference with
their privileged jurisdiction. But the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), with its
articles declaring the unwillingness or negligence shown by public officials
in finding out and punishing heretics, making provisions against this, and
ordaining that none but persons of well-known orthodoxy were to be
appointed magistrates (Arts. 23, 28, 24), confessed that there were many
even among those in office who disliked the policy of persecution.
Contemporary official documents confirm this unwillingness. We hear of
municipal magistrates intervening to protect their Protestant fellow-citizens
from punishment in the ecclesiastical courts; of town’s police conniving at
the escape of heretics; of a procurator at law who was suspended from
office for a year for such connivance;[202] and of civil courts who could not
be persuaded to pass sentences except merely nominal ones.
The growing discontent at the severe treatment of the persecuted Protestants
made itself manifest, even within the Parlement of Paris, so long notorious
for its persecuting zeal. This became evident when the criminal court of the
Parlement (la Tournelle, 1559) commuted a sentence of death passed on
three Protestants into one of banishment. The violent Romanists protested
against this, and demanded a meeting of the whole Parlement to fix its
mode of judicial action. At this meeting some of the members—Antoine
Fumée, du Faur, Viole, and Antoine du Bourg (the son of a Chancellor in

the days of Francis I.)—spoke strongly on behalf of the Protestants. They
pleaded that a space of six months after trial should be given to the accused
to reconsider their position, and that, if they resolve to stand fast in the
faith, they should be allowed to withdraw from the kingdom. Their boldness
encouraged others. The Cardinal Lorraine and the Constable Montmorency
dreaded the consequences of prolonged discussion, and communicated their
fears to the King. Henry, accompanied by the Cardinals of Lorraine and of
Guise, the Constable, and Francis, Duke de Guise, entered the hall where
Parlement sat, and ordered the discussion to be continued in his presence.
The minority were not intimidated. Du Faur and Viole demanded a total
cessation of the persecution pending the summoning of a Council. Du
Bourg went further. He contrasted the pure lives and earnest piety of the
persecuted with the scandals which disgraced the Roman Church and the
Court. “It is no light matter,” he said, “to condemn to the stake men who
invoke the name of Jesus in the midst of the flames.” The King was furious.
He ordered the arrest of du Bourg and du Faur on the spot, and shortly
afterwards Fumée and La Porte were also sent to the Bastille. This arbitrary
seizure of members of the Parlement of Paris may be said to mark the time
when the Protestants of France began to assume the form of a political as
well as of a religious party. At this anxious juncture Henry II. met his death,
on June 30th, by the accidental thrust of a lance at a tournament held in
honour of the approaching marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with Philip of
Spain. He lingered till July 10th, 1559.

§ 8. The higher Aristocracy won for the Reformation.

When the lists of Protestants who suffered for their faith in France or who
were compelled to take refuge in Geneva and other Protestant towns are
examined and analysed, as they have been by French archæologists, it is
found that the great number of martyrs and refugees were artisans,
tradesmen, farmers, and the like.[203] A few names of “notables”—a
general, a member of the Parlement of Toulouse, a “gentleman” of
Limousin—are found among the martyrs, and a much larger proportion
among the fugitives. The names of members of noble houses of France are
conspicuous by their absence. This does not necessarily mean that the new
teaching had not found acceptance among men and women in the upper
classes of French society. The noble of the sixteenth century, so long as he

remained within his own territory and in his château, was almost
independent. He was not subject to the provincial tribunals. Protestantism
had been spreading among such. We hear of several high-born ladies
present in the congregation of three or four hundred Protestants who were
surrounded in a large house in the Rue St. Jacques (Sept. 4th, 1558), and
who were released. Renée, daughter of Louis XII., Duchess of Ferrara, had
declared herself a Protestant, and had been visited by Calvin as early as
1535.[204] Francis d’Andelot, the youngest of the three Chatillons, became a
convert during his imprisonment at Melun (1551-56). His more celebrated
brother, Gaspard de Coligny, the Admiral of France, became a Protestant
during his imprisonment after the fall of St. Quentin (1558).[205] De Bèze
(Beza) tells us that as early as 1555, Antoine de Bourbon, titular King of
Navarre in right of his wife Jeanne d’Albret, and next in succession to King
Henri II. and his sons, had the new faith preached in the chapel at Nérac,
and that he asked a minister to be sent to him from Geneva. His brother
Louis, Prince of Condé, also declared himself on the Protestant side. The
wives of the brothers Bourbon, Jeanne d’Albret and Eléanor de Roye, were
more determined and consistent Protestants than their husbands. The two
brothers were among those present at the assemblies in the Pré-aux-Clercs,
where for five successive evenings (May 13-17) more than five thousand
persons met to sing Clement Marot’s Psalms.[206] Calvin wrote
energetically to all these great nobles, urging them to declare openly on the
side of the Gospel, and protect their brethren in the faith less able to defend
themselves.

§ 9. France ruled by the Guises.[207]

The successor of Henry II. was his son Francis II., who was fifteen years of
age, and therefore entitled by French law to rule in his own name. He was a
youth feeble in mind and in body, and devotedly attached to his young and
accomplished wife, Mary Queen of Scots. She believed naturally that her
husband could not do better than entrust the government of the kingdom to
her uncles, Charles the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis the Duke de
Guise. The Cardinal had been Henry II.’s most trusted Minister; and his
brother was esteemed to be the best soldier in France. When the Parlement
of Paris, according to ancient custom, came to congratulate the King on his

succession, and to ask to whom they were to apply in affairs of State, they
were told by the King that they were to obey the Cardinal and the Duke “as
himself.” The Constable de Montmorency and the favourite, Diane de
Poitiers, were sent from the Court, and the Queen-Mother, Catherine de’
Medici, that “shopkeeper’s daughter,” as the young Queen called her, found
herself as devoid of influence as she had been during the lifetime of her
husband.
The Cardinal of Lorraine had been the chief adviser of that policy of
extirpating the Protestants to which the late King had devoted himself, and
it was soon apparent that it would be continued by the new government.
The process against Antoine du Bourg and his fellow-members of the
Parlement of Paris who had dared to remonstrate against the persecution,
was pushed forward with all speed. They were condemned to the stake, and
the only mitigation of sentence was that Du Bourg was to be strangled
before he was burnt. His fate provoked much sympathy. As he was led to
the place of execution the crowd pleaded with him to recant. His resolute,
dignified bearing made a great impression; and his dying speech, according
to one eye-witness, “did more harm to the Roman Church than a hundred
ministers could have done,” and, according to another, “made more
converts among the French students than all the books of Calvin.” The
persecutions of Protestants of lower rank increased rather than diminished.
Police made descents on the houses in the Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain
and neighbouring streets.[208] Spies were hired to insinuate themselves into
the confidence of the suspected for the purpose of denouncing them. The
Parlement of Paris instituted four separate criminal courts for the sole
purpose of trying heretics brought before them. The prisons were no sooner
filled than they were emptied by sentences which sent the condemned to the
galleys or to death. The government incited to persecution by new
declarations and edicts. It declared that houses in which conventicles were
held were to be razed to the ground (Sept. 4th, 1559); that all who organised
unlawful assemblies were to be punished by death (Nov. 9th, 1559); that
nobles who had justiciary courts were to act according to law in the matter
of heresy, or to be deprived of their justiciary rights (Feb. 1560). In spite of
all this stern repression, the numbers of the Protestants increased, and
Calvin could declare that there were at least 300,000 in France.

The character of Protestantism in France had been changing. In the earlier
years of the persecution they had submitted meekly without thought of
revolt, resigned to their fate, rejoicing to suffer in the cause of Christ. But
under this rule of the Guises the question of resistance was discussed. It
could be said that revolt did not mean revenge for injuries done to
themselves. A foreign family had overawed their King and imposed
themselves on France. The Princes of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon and
his brother Louis de Condé, in whose veins ran the blood of Saint Louis,
who were the natural leaders of the people, were flouted by the Guises. The
inviolability of Parlement had been attacked in the execution of Antoine du
Bourg, and the justiciary rights of great nobles were threatened simply in
order to extirpate “those of the religion.” They believed that France was full
of men who had no good will to the tyranny of the “foreigners.” They
consulted their brethren in exile, and Calvin himself, on the lawfulness and
expediency of an armed insurrection. The refugees favoured the plan.
Calvin denounced it. “If one drop of blood is shed in such a revolt, rivers
will flow; it is better that we all perish than cause such a scandal to the
cause of Christ and His Evangel.” Some of the Protestants were not to be
convinced. They only needed a leader. Their natural head was the King of
Navarre; but Antoine de Bourbon was too unstable. Louis de Condé, his
brother, was sounded.[209] It is said that he promised to come forward if the
enterprise was confined to the seizure of the Guises, and if it was successful
in effecting this. A Protestant gentleman, Godefroy de Barry, Seigneur de la
Renaudie, became temporary leader. He had wrongs to avenge. He had been
condemned by the Parlement of Dijon (Burgundy), had escaped to Geneva,
and had been converted there; his brother-in-law, Gaspard de Heu, of Metz,
had been strangled by the Guises in the castle of Vincennes without form of
trial. A number of gentlemen and nobles promised their assistance. The
conspirators swore to undertake nothing against the King; the enterprise
was limited to the arrest of the Guises. News of the project began to leak
out. Every information went to show that the Guises were the objects of
attack. The Court was moved from Blois to Amboise, which was a fortified
city. More precise information filtered to headquarters. The Duke of Guise
captured some small bands of conspirators, and de la Renaudie himself was
slain in a skirmish. The Guises took summary vengeance. Their prisoners
were often slaughtered when caught; or were tied hand and foot and thrown
into the Loire. Others were hurried through a form of trial. So many gallows

were needed that there was not wood enough, and the prisoners were hung
from the doors and battlements of the castle of Amboise. The young King
and Queen, with their ladies, walked out after dinner to feast their eyes on
the dead bodies.
Even before the Conspiracy of Amboise had run its length, members of the
Court had begun to protest against the religious policy of the Guises.
Catherine de’ Medici had talked the matter over with the Admiral Coligny,
had been told by him that the religious persecutions were at the bottom of
the troubles in the kingdom, and had listened to his proposal that all such
should be suspended until the meeting of a Council. The result was that
government decided to pardon those accused of heresy if they would
promise for the future to live as good Catholics. The brutalities of the
methods by which the sharers in the foolishly planned and feebly executed
Conspiracy of Amboise were punished increased the state of disorder in the
kingdom, and the hatred against the Guises found vent in an Epistle sent to
the Tiger of France, in which the Duke is addressed as a “mad tiger, a
venomous viper, a sepulchre of abominations.”
Catherine de’ Medici deemed the opportunity favourable for exercising her
influence. She contrived to get Michel de l’Hôpital appointed as Chancellor,
knowing that he was opposed to the sanguinary policy pursued. He was able
to inspire the Edict of Romorantin (May 18th, 1560), which made the
Bishops judges of the crime of heresy, imposed penalties on false accusers,
and left the punishment to be bestowed on attendance at conventicles in the
hands of the presidents of the tribunals. Then, with the help of the
Chancellor, Catherine managed to get an Assembly of the Notables
summoned to meet at Fontainebleau. There, many of the members
advocated a cessation of the religious persecution. One Archbishop,
Marillac of Vienne, and the Bishops of Orléans and Valence, asserted boldly
that the religious disorders were really caused by the scandals in the
Church; spoke against severe repression until a Council, national or general,
had been held; and hinted that the services of the Guises were not
indispensable. At the beginning of the second session Coligny spoke. He
had the courage to make himself the representative of the Huguenots, as the
Protestants now began to be nicknamed. He attacked boldly the religious
policy of the Guises, charged them with standing between the King and
loyal subjects, and declared that the persecuted were Christians who asked

for nothing but to be allowed to worship God as the Gospel taught them. He
presented a petition to the King from the Protestants asserting their loyalty,
begging that the persecution should cease, and asking that “temples” might
be assigned for their worship. The petition was unsigned, but Coligny
declared that fifty thousand names could be obtained in Normandy alone.
The Duke of Guise spoke with great violence, but the more politic Cardinal
induced him to agree with the other members to call a meeting of the States
General of France, to be held on the 10th of December 1560.
Shortly after the Notables had dispersed, word came of another conspiracy,
in which not only the Bourbon Princes, but also the Constable
Montmorency were said to be implicated. Disturbances broke out in
Provence and Dauphiné. The Guises went back to their old policy of
violence. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé were summoned by
the King to appear before him to justify themselves. Although well warned
of what might happen, they obeyed the summons, and presented themselves
unattended by armed men. Condé was seized and imprisoned. He was
condemned to death, and his execution was fixed for the 10th of December.
The King of Navarre was left at liberty, but was closely watched; and more
than one attempt was made to assassinate him. It was vaguely believed that
the Cardinal of Lorraine had resolved to get rid of all the leaders of the
Huguenots by death or imprisonment.
While these terrifying suggestions were being whispered, the young King
fell ill, and died suddenly. This ended the rule of the Guises, and the French
Protestants breathed freely again.
“Did you ever read or hear,” said Calvin in a letter to Sturm, “of anything
more opportune than the death of the King? The evils had reached an
extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God shows
Himself from heaven. He who pierced the eye of the father has now
stricken the ear of the son.”

§ 10. Catherine de’ Medici becomes Regent.

In the confusion which resulted, Catherine recognised that at last the time
had come when she could gratify the one strong passion which possessed
her—the passion to govern. Charles IX. was a boy of ten. A Regent was
essential. Antoine de Bourbon, as the first Prince of the Blood, might have

claimed the position; but Catherine first terrified him with what might be
the fate of Condé, and then proposed that the Constable Montmorency and
himself should be her principal advisers. The facile Antoine accepted the
situation: the Constable was recalled to the Court; Louis de Condé was
released from prison. His imprisonment had made a deep impression all
over France. The Protestants believed that he had suffered for their sakes.
Hymns of prayer had been sung during his captivity, and songs of
thanksgiving greeted his release.[210]

“Le pauvre Chrestien, qui endure
Prison, pour verité;
Le Prince, en captivité dure
Sans l’avoir mérité?
An plus fort de leurs peines entendent
Tes œuvres tons parfaits,
Et gloire et louange te rendent
De tes merveilleux faits.”

This was sung all over France during Condé’s imprisonment; after his
release the tone varied:

“Resjonissez vons en Dieu
Fidéles de chacun lieu;
Car Dieu pour nous a mandé (envoyé)
Le bon prince de Condé;

Et vous nobles protestans
Princes, seigneurs attestans;
Car Dieu pour nous a maudé
Le bon prince de Condé.”

Catherine de’ Medici was forty-one years of age when she became the
Regent of France.[211] Her life had been hard. Born in 1519, the niece of
Pope Clement VII, she was married to Henry of France in 1534. She had
been a neglected wife all the days of her married life. For ten years she had
been childless,[212] and her sonnets breathe the prayer of Rachel—Give me
children, or else I die. During Henry’s absence with the army in 1552, he

had grudgingly appointed her Regent, and she had shown both ability and
patience in acquiring a knowledge of all the details of government. After the
defeat of Saint-Quentin she for once earned her husband’s gratitude and
praise by the way in which she had promptly persuaded the Parliament to
grant a subsidy of 300,000 livres. These incidents were her sole
apprenticeship in the art of ruling. She had always been a great eater,
walker, and rider.[213] Her protruding eyes and her bulging forehead recalled
the features of her grand-uncle, Pope Leo X. She had the taste of her family
for art and display. Her strongest intellectual force was a robust, hard, and
narrow common sense which was responsible both for her success and for
her failures. She can scarcely be called immoral; it seemed rather that she
was utterly destitute of any moral sense whatsoever.
The difficulties which confronted the Regent were great, both at home and
abroad. The question of questions was the treatment to be given to her
Protestant subjects. She seems from the first to have been in favour of a
measure of toleration; but the fanatically Roman Catholic party was
vigorous in France, especially in Paris, and was ably led by the Guises; and
Philip of Spain had made the suppression of the Reformation a matter of
international policy.
Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late
King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had
been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the
excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was
nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the
opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in
1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments
which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist
ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging
the people to assert their liberties. They were even permitted to address
some of the assemblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles
Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the nobles at
Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the
whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that
Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to assume the Regency,
and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full
of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood.

Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater
dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the
Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man
of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of
the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands
of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient,
and issued no order without her permission.
The Estates met at Orléans on the 13th of December. The opening speech
by the Chancellor, Michel de l’Hôpital, showed that the Regent and her
councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders
(Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find
remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he
believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious
beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning passions. He could not avoid
seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to
the same race or living under the same laws. Might they not all wait for the
decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating
epithets of Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists, and remember that they were all
good Christians. The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the
second sitting. Dr. Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris,
voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be
brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the
Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and
even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that
Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the
Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange,
an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the Nobles and for the Third
Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice
and ignorance of the clergy.
At the sitting on Jan. 1st, 1561, each of the three Estates presented a written
list of grievances (cahiers). That of the Third Estate was a memorable and
important document in three hundred and fifty-four articles, and reveals, as
no other paper of the time does, the evils resulting from absolutist and
aristocratic government in France. It asked for complete toleration in
matters of religion, for a Reformation of the Church in the sense of giving a
large extension of power to the laity, for uniformity in judicial procedure,

for the abolition or curtailment of powers in signorial courts, for
quinquennial meetings of the Estates General, and demanded that the day
and place of the next meeting should be fixed before the end of the present
sitting. The Nobles were divided on the question of toleration, and
presented three separate papers. In the first, which came from central
Prance, stern repression of the Protestant faith was demanded; in the
second, coming from the nobles of the Western provinces, complete
toleration was claimed; in the third it was asked that both parties should be
made to keep the peace, and that only preachers and pastors be punished.
The list presented by the Clergy, like those of the other two orders, insisted
upon the reform of the Church; but it took the line of urging the abolition of
the Concordat, and a return to the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of
Bourges.
The Government answered these lists of grievances presented by an edict
and an ordinance. In the edict (Jan. 28th, 1561) the King ordered that all
prosecutions for religion should cease, and that all prisoners should be
released, with an admonition “to live in a catholic manner” for the future.
The ordinance (dated Jan. 31st, but not completed till the following
August), known as the Ordinance of Orléans, was a very elaborate
document. It touched upon almost all questions brought forward in the lists
of grievances, and enacted various reforms, both civil and ecclesiastic—all
of which were for the most part evaded in practice. The Estates were
adjourned until the 1st of May.
The Huguenots had gained a suspension of persecution, if not toleration, by
the edict of Jan. 28th, and the disposition of the Government made them
hope for still further assistance. Refugees came back in great numbers from
Switzerland, Germany, England, and even from Italy. The number of
Protestant congregations increased, and Geneva provided the pastors. The
edict did not give liberty of worship, but the Protestants acted as if it did.
This roused the wrath of the more fanatically disposed portion of the
Roman Catholic population. Priests and monks fanned the flames of
sectarian bitterness. The Government was denounced, and anti-Protestant
riots disturbed the country. When the Huguenots of Paris attempted to
revive the psalm-singings in the Pré-aux-Clercs, they were mobbed, and
beaten with sticks by the populace. This led to reprisals in those parts of the
country where the Huguenots were in a majority. In some towns the

churches were invaded, the images torn down, and the relics burnt. The
leaders strove to restrain their followers.[215] Calvin wrote energetically
from Geneva against the lawlessness:

“God has never enjoined on any one to destroy idols, save on every
man in his own house or on those placed in authority in public
places.... Obedience is better than sacrifice; we must look to what it is
lawful for us to do, and must keep ourselves within bounds.”

At the Court at Fontainebleau, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, and the Princess
of Condé were permitted by the Regent to have worship in their rooms after
the Reformed rite; and Coligny had in his household a minister from
Geneva, Jean Raymond Merlin, to whose sermons outsiders were not only
admitted but invited. These things gave great offence to the Constable
Montmorency, who was a strong Romanist. He was still more displeased
when Monluc, Bishop of Valence, preached in the State apartments before
the boy King and the Queen Mother. He thought it was undignified for a
Bishop to preach, and he believed that Monluc’s sermons contained
something very like Lutheran theology. He invited the Duke of Guise and
Saint-André, both old enemies, to supper (April 16th, 1561), and the three
pleged themselves to save the Romanism of France. This union was
afterwards known as the Triumvirate.
Meanwhile religious disturbances were increasing. The Huguenots
demanded the right to have “temples” granted to them or built at their own
expense; and in many places they openly gathered for public worship and
for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They frequently met armed to
protect themselves from attack. The Government at length interfered, and
by an edict (July 1561) prohibited, under penalty of confiscation of
property, all conventicles, public or private, whether the worshippers were
armed or unarmed, where sermons were made and the sacraments
celebrated in any other fashion than that of the Catholic Church. The edict
declared, on the other hand, that magistrates were not to be too zealous;
persons who laid false information were to be severely punished; and all
attacks on houses were forbidden. It was evidently meant to conciliate both
parties. Coligny did not discontinue the services in his apartments, and
wrote to his co-religionists that they had nothing to fear so long as they
worshipped in private houses. Jeanne d’Albret declared herself openly a

Protestant; and as she travelled from Nérac to Fontainebleau she restored to
the Huguenots churches which the magistrates had taken from them in
obedience to the edict of July.
The prorogued meeting of the States General did not assemble until the 1st
of August, and even then representatives of two orders only were present.
An ecclesiastical synod was sitting at Poissy (opened July 28th), and the
clerical representatives were there. It was the 27th of August before the
three orders met together in presence of the King and the members of his
Council at Saint-Germain. The meeting had been called for the purpose of
discussing the question of national finance; but it was impossible to ignore
the religious question.
In their cahiers, both the Nobles and the Third Estate advocated complete
toleration and the summoning a National Council. The financial proposals
of the Third Estate were thoroughgoing. After a statement of the national
indebtedness, and a representation that taxation had reached its utmost
limits, they proposed that money should be obtained from the superfluity of
ecclesiastical wealth. In their cahier of Jan. 1st, the Third Estate had
sketched a civil constitution for the French Church; they now went further,
and proposed that all ecclesiastical revenues should be nationalised, and
that the clergy should be paid by the State. They calculated that a surplus of
seventy-two million livres would result, and proposed that forty-two
millions should be set aside to liquidate the national debt.
This bold proposal was impracticable in the condition of the kingdom. The
Parlement of Paris regarded it as a revolutionary attack on the rights of
property, and it alienated them for ever from the Reformation movement;
but it enabled the Government to wring from the alarmed Churchmen a
subsidy of sixteen million livres, to be paid in six annual instalments.

§ 11. The Conference at Poissy.

It was scarcely possible, in view of the Pope and Philip of Spain, to
assemble a National Council, but the Government had already conceived
the idea of a meeting of theologians, which would be such an assembly in
all but the name. They had invited representatives of the Protestant
ministers (July 25th) to attend the synod of the clergy sitting at Poissy. The
invitation had been accepted, and the Government intended to give an air of

unusual solemnity to the meeting. The King, surrounded by his mother, his
brothers, and the Princes of the Blood, presided as at a sitting of the States
General. The Chancellor, in the King’s name, opened the session with a
remarkable speech, in which he set forth the advantages to be gained from
religious union. He addressed the assembled bishops and Roman Catholic
theologians, assuring them that they ought to have no scruples in meeting
the Protestant divines. The latter were not heretics like the old Manicheans
or Arians. They accepted the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith, the Apostles’
Creed, the four principal Councils and their Creeds (the symbols of Nicea,
Constantinople, and Chalcedon). The main difference between them was
that the Protestants wished the Church to be reformed according to the
primitive pattern. They had given proof of their sincerity by being content
to die for their faith.
The Reformers were represented by twelve ministers, among whom were
Morel of Paris; Nicolas des Gallars, minister of the French Protestant
Church in London, and by twenty laymen. Their leader was Théodore de
Bèze (Beza), a man of noble birth, celebrated as a Humanist, a brilliant
writer and controversialist, whom Calvin, at the request of Antoine de
Bourbon, Catherine de’ Medici, and Coligny, had commissioned to
represent him. De Bèze was privately presented to the King and the Regent
by the King of Navarre and by the Prince de Condé, and his learning,
presence, and stately courtesy made a great impression upon the Court. He
had been born in the same year as the Regent (1519), and had thrown away
very brilliant prospects to become a minister of the Reformed Church.
The meeting was held in the refectory of the nuns of Poissy.[216] The King
and his suite were placed at one end of the hall, and the Romanist bishops
and theologians were arranged by the walls on the two sides. After the
Chancellor had finished his speech, the representatives of the Protestants
were introduced by the Duke of Guise, in command of an escort of the
King’s archers. They were placed in front of a barrier which separated them
from the Romanist divines. “There come the dogs of Geneva,” said the
Cardinal of Tournon as they entered the hall.
The speech of de Bèze, delivered on the first day (Sept. 7th) of the
Colloquy, as it came to be called, made a great impression. He expounded
with clearness of thought and precision of language the creed of his Church,
showing where it agreed and where it differed from that of the Roman

Catholic. The gravity and the charm of his eloquence compelled attention,
and it was not until he began to criticise with frank severity the doctrine of
transubstantiation that he provoked murmurs of dissent. The speech must
have disappointed Catherine. It had made no attempt to attenuate the
differences between the two confessions, and held out no hopes of a reunion
of the Churches.
The Cardinal of Lorraine was charged to reply on behalf of the Roman
Catholic party (Sept. 16th). His speech was that of a strong partisan, and
dealt principally with the two points of the authority of the Church in
matters of faith and usage, and the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy
Supper. There was no attempt at conciliation.
Three days after (Sept. 19th), Cardinal Ippolito d’Este arrived at Saint-
Germain, accompanied by a numerous suite, among whom was Laynez, the
General of the Society of Jesus. He had been sent by the Pope, legate a
latere, to end, if possible, the conference at Poissy, and to secure the
goodwill of the French Government for the promulgation of the decrees of
the Council of Trent. He so far prevailed that the last two sittings of the
conference (Sept. 24th, 26th) were with closed doors, and were scenes of
perpetual recriminations. Laynez distinguished himself by his vituperative
violence. The Protestant ministers were “wolves,” “foxes,” “serpents,”
“assassins.” Catherine persevered. She arranged a conference between five
of the more liberal Roman Catholic clergy and five Protestant ministers. It
met (Sept. 30th, Oct. 1st), and managed to draft a formula about the Holy
Supper which was at once rejected by the Bishops of the French Church
(Oct. 9th).
Out of this Colloquy of Poissy came the edict of January 17th, 1562, which
provided that Protestants were to surrender all the churches and
ecclesiastical buildings they had seized, and prohibited them from meeting
for public worship, whether within a building or not, inside the walls of any
town. On the other hand, they were to have the right to assemble for public
worship anywhere outside walled towns, and meetings in private houses
within the walls were not prohibited. Thus the Protestants of France secured
legal recognition for the first time, and enjoyed the right to worship
according to their conscience. They were not satisfied—they could scarcely
be, so long as they were kept outside the walls; but their leaders insisted on
their accepting the edict as a reasonable compromise. “If the liberty

promised us in the edict lasts,” Calvin wrote, “the Papacy will fall to the
ground of itself.” Within one year the Huguenots of France found
themselves freed from persecution, and in the enjoyment of a measured
liberty of public worship. It can scarcely be doubted that they owed this to
Catherine de’ Medici. She was a child of the Renaissance, and was naturally
on the side of free thought; and she was, besides, at this time persuaded that
the Huguenots had the future on their side. In the coming struggle they
regarded this edict as their charter, and frequently demanded its restitution
and enforcement.
Catherine de’ Medici had shown both courage and constancy in her
attempts at conciliation. To the remonstrances of Philip of Spain she had
replied that she meant to be master in her own house; and when the
Constable de Montmorency had threatened to leave the Court, he had been
told that he might do as he pleased. But she was soon to be convinced that
she had overestimated the strength of the Protestants, and that she could
never count on the consistent support of their nominal leader, the vain and
vacillating Antoine de Bourbon. Had Jeanne d’Albret been in her husband’s
place, things might have been different.
The edict of January 17th, 1562, had exasperated the Romanists without
satisfying the mass of the Protestants. The marked increase in the numbers
of Protestant congregations, and their not very strict observance of the
limitations of the edict, had given rise to disturbances in many parts of the
country. Everything seemed to tend towards civil war. The spark which
kindled the conflagration was the Massacre of Vassy.[217]

§ 12. The Massacre of Vassy.

The Duke of Guise, travelling from Joinville to Paris, accompanied by his
brother, the Cardinal of Guise, his children and his wife, and escorted by a
large armed retinue, halted at Vassy (March 1st, 1562). It was a Sunday, and
the Duke wished to hear Mass. Scarcely a gunshot from the church was a
barn where the Protestants (in defiance of the edict, for Vassy was a walled
town) were holding a service. The congregation, barely a year old, was
numerous and zealous. It was an eyesore to Antoinette de Bourbon, the
mother of the Guises, who lived in the neighbouring château of Joinville,
and saw her dependants attracted by the preaching at Vassy. The Duke was

exasperated at seeing men whom he counted his subjects defying him in his
presence. He sent some of his retainers to order the worshippers to quit the
place. They were received by cries of “Papists! idolaters!” When they
attempted to force an entrance, stones began to fly, and the Duke was
struck. The barn was rushed, the worshippers fusilladed, and before the
Duke gave orders to cease firing, sixty-three of the six or seven hundred
Protestants were slain, and over a hundred wounded.
The news of the massacre spread fast; and while it exasperated the
Huguenots, the Romanists hailed it as a victory. The Constable de
Montmorency and the Marshal Saint André went out to meet the Duke, and
the Guises entered Paris in triumph, escorted by more than three thousand
armed men. The Protestants began arming themselves, and crowded to Paris
to place themselves under the orders of the Prince of Condé. It was feared
that the two factions would fight in the streets.
The Regent with the King retired to Fontainebleau. She was afraid of the
Triumvirs (Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal Saint-André),
and she invited the Prince de Condé to protect her and her children. Condé
lost this opportunity of placing himself and his co-religionists in the
position of being the support of the throne. The Triumvirate, with Antoine
de Bourbon, who now seemed to be their obedient servant, marched on
Fontainebleau, and compelled the King and the Queen Mother to return to
Paris. Catherine believed that the Protestants had abandoned her, and turned
to the Romanists.
The example of massacre given at Vassy was followed in many places
where the Romanists were in a majority. In Paris, Sens, Rouen, and
elsewhere, the Protestant places of worship were attacked, and many of the
worshippers slain. At Toulouse, the Protestants shut themselves up in the
Capitol, and were besieged by the Romanists. They at last surrendered,
trusting to a promise that they would be allowed to leave the town in safety.
The promise was not kept, and three thousand men, women, and children
were slain in cold blood. This slaughter, in violation of oath, was celebrated
by the Roman Catholics of Toulouse in centenary festivals, which were held
in 1662, in 1762, and would have been celebrated in 1862 had the
Government of Napoleon III. not interfered to forbid it.

These massacres provoked reprisals. The Huguenots broke into the
Romanist churches, tore down the images, defaced the altars, and destroyed
the relics.

§ 13. The Beginning of the Wars of Religion.

Gradually the parties faced each other with the Duke of Guise and the
Constable Montmorency at the head of the Romanists, and the Prince of
Condé and Admiral Coligny at the head of the Huguenots. France became
the scene of a civil conflict, where religious fanaticism added its cruelties to
the ordinary barbarities of warfare.
The Venetian Ambassador, writing home to the chiefs of his State, was of
opinion that this first war of religion prevented France from becoming
Protestant. The cruelties of the Romanists had disgusted a large number of
Frenchmen, who, though they had no great sympathy for the Protestant
faith, would have gladly allied themselves with a policy of toleration. The
Huguenot chiefs themselves saw that the desecration of churches did not
serve the cause they had at heart. Calvin and de Bèze wrote, energetically
urging their followers to refrain from attacks on churches, images, and
relics. But it was all to no purpose. At Orléans, Coligny and Condé heard
that their men were assaulting the Church of the Holy Spirit. They hastened
there, and Condé saw a Huguenot soldier on the roof of the church about to
cast an image to the ground. Seizing an arquebus, he pointed it at the man,
and ordered him to desist and come down. The soldier did not stop his work
for an instant. “Sire,” he said, “have patience with me until I destroy this
idol, and then let me die if it be your pleasure.” When men were content to
die rather than refrain from iconoclasm, it was in vain to expect to check it.
Somehow the slaughter of men made less impression than the sack of
churches, and moderate men came to the opinion that if the Huguenots
prevailed, they would be as intolerant as the Romanists had been. The rising
tide of sympathy for the persecuted Protestants was checked by these deeds
of violence.
The progress of the war was upon the whole unfavourable to the
Huguenots, and in the beginning of 1553 both parties were exhausted. The
Constable Montmorency had been captured by the Huguenots, and the
Prince de Condé by the Romanists. The Duke of Guise was shot from

behind by a Huguenot, and died six days later (Feb. 24th, 1563). The
Marshal Saint-André and Antoine de Bourbon had both died during the
course of the war. Catherine de’ Medici was everywhere recognised as the
head of the Romanist party. She no longer needed the Protestants to
counterbalance the Guises and the Constable. She could now pursue her
own policy.
From this time forward she was decidedly hostile to the Huguenots. She had
learned the resources and popularity of the Romanists. But she disliked
fighting, and the religious war was ruining France. Her idea was that it
would be necessary to tolerate the Protestants, but impossible to grant them
common rights with the Romanists. She applied herself to win over the
Prince de Condé, who was tired of his captivity. Negotiations were opened.
Catherine, the Constable, Condé, and d’Andelot met at Orléans; and, after
discussion, terms were agreed upon (March 7th), and the Edict of Amboise
incorporating them was published (March 18th, 1563).
Condé had asked for the restitution of the edict of Jan. 17th, 1561, and the
strict enforcement of its terms. This was refused. The terms of the new edict
were as favourable for men of good birth, but not for others. Condé had to
undergo the reproaches of Coligny, that he had secured rights for himself
but had betrayed his poorer brethren in the faith; and that he had destroyed
by his signature more churches than the united forces of Romanism had
done in ten years. Calvin spoke of him as a poor Prince who had betrayed
God for his own vanity.
The truce, for it was no more than a truce, concluded by the Edict of
Amboise lasted nearly five years. It was broken by the Huguenots, who
were suspicious that Catherine was plotting with the Duke of Alva against
them. Alva was engaged in a merciless attempt to exterminate the
Protestants of the Low Countries, and Catherine had been at pains to
provide provisions for his troops. The Protestant leaders came to the
desperate conclusion to imitate the Triumvirate in 1561, and seize upon the
King’s person. They failed, and their attempt began the Second War of
Religion. The indecisive battle of Saint Denis was fought on Nov. 10th,
1567, and the Constable Montmorency fell in the fight. Both parties were
almost exhausted, and the terms of peace were the same as those in the
Edict of Amboise.

The close of this Second War of Religion saw a determined attempt, mainly
directed by the Jesuits, to inspire the masses of France with enthusiasm for
the Roman Catholic Church. Eloquent preachers traversed the land, who
insisted on the antiquity of the Roman and the novelty of the Protestant
faith. Brotherhoods were formed, and enrolled men of all sorts and
conditions of life sworn to bear arms against every kind of heresy. Outrages
and assassinations of Protestants were common; and the Government
appeared indifferent. It was, however, the events in the Low Countries
which again alarmed the Protestants. The Duke of Alva, who had begun his
rule there with an appearance of gentleness, had suddenly seized and
executed the Counts Egmont and Horn. He had appointed a commission to
judge the leaders and accomplices in the earlier rising—a commission
which from its deeds gained for itself the name of the Tribunal of Blood.
Huguenot soldiers hastened to enrol themselves in the levies which the
Prince of Orange was raising for the deliverance of his countrymen. But the
Huguenot leaders had other thoughts. Was Catherine meaning to treat them
as Alva had treated Egmont and Horn? They found that they were watched.
The suspicion and suspense became intolerable. Coligny and Condé
resolved to take refuge in La Rochelle. As they passed through the country
they were joined by numbers of Huguenots, and soon became a small army.
Their followers were eager to avenge the murders committed on those of
their faith, and pillage and worse marked the track of the army. Condé and
the Admiral punished some of their marauding followers by death; and this,
says the chronicler, “made the violence of the soldier more secret if not
more rare.”
D’Andelot had collected his Normans and Bretons. Jeanne d’Albret had
roused her Gascons and the Provençals, and appeared with her son, Henry
of Navarre, a boy of fifteen, at the head of her troops. She published a
manifesto to justify her in taking up arms. In the camp at La Rochelle she
was the soul of the party, fired their passions, and sustained their courage.
[218]

In the war which followed, the Huguenots were unfortunate. At the battle of
Jarnac, Condé’s cavalry was broken by a charge on their flank made by the
German mercenaries under Tavannes. He fought till he was surrounded and
dismounted. After he had surrendered he was brutally shot in cold blood.
The Huguenots soon rallied at Cognac, where the Queen of Navarre joined

them. She presented her son and her nephew, young Henry of Condé, to the
troops, and was received with acclamations. Young Henry of Navarre was
proclaimed head of the party, and his cousin, Henry of Condé, a boy of the
same age, was associated with him. The war went on. The Battle of
Moncontour ended in the most disastrous defeat the Huguenots had ever
sustained. Catherine de’ Medici thought that she had them at her mercy, and
proposed terms of submission which would have left them liberty of
conscience but denied the right to worship. The heroic Queen of Navarre
declared that the names of Jeanne and Henry would never appear on a treaty
containing these conditions; and Coligny, like his contemporary, William
the Silent, was never more dangerous than after a defeat. The Huguenots
announced themselves ready to fight to the last; and Catherine, to her
astonishment, saw them stronger than ever. An armistice was arranged, and
the Edict of Saint-Germain (Aug. 8th, 1570) published the terms of peace. It
was more favourable to the Huguenots than any earlier one. They were
guaranteed freedom of conscience throughout the whole kingdom. They had
the liberty of public worship in all places where it had been practised before
the war, in the suburbs of at least two towns in every government, and in
the residences of the great nobles. Four strongly fortified towns—La
Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité—were to be held by them as
pledges for at least two years. The King withdrew himself from the Spanish
alliance and the international policy of the suppression of the Protestants.
William of Orange and Ludovic of Nassau were declared to be his friends,
in spite of the fact that they were the rebel subjects of Philip of Spain and
had assisted the Huguenots in the late war.
After the peace of Saint-Germain, Coligny, now the only great leader left to
the Huguenots, lived far from the Court at La Rochelle, acting as the
guardian of the two young Bourbon Princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry
of Condé. He occupied himself in securing for the Reformed the advantages
they had won in the recent treaty of peace.
Catherine de’ Medici had begun to think of strengthening herself at home
and abroad by matrimonial alliances. She wished one of her sons, whether
the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Alençon it mattered little to her, to marry
Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Marguerite to espouse the young
King of Navarre. Both designs meant that the Huguenots must be
conciliated. They were in no hurry to respond to her advances. Both

Coligny and Jeanne d’Albret kept themselves at a distance from the Court.
Suddenly the young King, Charles IX., seemed to awaken to his royal
position. He had been hitherto entirely submissive to his mother, expending
his energies now in hunting, now in lock-making; but, if one can judge from
what awakened him, cherishing a sullen grudge against Philip of Spain and
his pretensions to guide the policy of Roman Catholic Europe.
Pope Pius V. had made Cosmo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Grand
Duke, and Philip of Spain and Maximilian of Austria had protested. Cosmo
sent an agent to win the German Protestants to side with him against
Maximilian, and to engage the Dutch Protestants to make trouble in the
Netherlands. Charles saw the opportunity of gratifying his grudge, and
entered eagerly into the scheme. His wishes did not for the time interfere
with his mother’s plans. If her marriage ideas were to succeed, she must
break with Spain. Coligny saw the advantages which might come to his
fellow-believers in the Netherlands—help in money from Italy and with
troops from France. He resolved to make his peace with Catherine, respond
to her advances, and betake himself to Court. He was graciously received,
for Catherine wished to make use of him; was made a member of the
Council, received a gift of one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and,
although a heretic, was put into possession of an Abbey whose revenues
amounted to twenty thousand livres a year. The Protestant chiefs were
respectfully listened to when they stated grievances, and these were
promptly put right, even at the risk of exasperating the Romanists. The
somewhat unwilling consent of Jeanne d’Albret was won to the marriage of
her son with Marguerite, and she herself came to Paris to settle the terms of
contract. There she was seized with pleurisy, and died—an irreparable loss
to the Protestant cause. Catherine’s home policy had been successful.
But Elizabeth of England was not to be enticed either into a French
marriage or a stable French alliance, and Catherine de’ Medici saw that her
son’s scheme might lead to France being left to confront Spain alone; and
the Spain of the sixteenth century played the part of Russia in the end of the
nineteenth—fascinating the statesmen of the day with its gloomy,
mysterious, incalculable power. She felt that she must detach Charles at
whatever cost from his scheme of flouting Philip by giving assistance to the
Protestants of the Low Countries. Coligny was in her way—recognised to
be the greatest statesman in France, enthusiastically bent on sending French

help to his struggling co-religionists, and encouraging Charles IX. Coligny
must be removed. The Guises were at deadly feud with him, and would be
useful in putting him out of the way. The Ambassador of Florence reported
significantly conferences between Catherine and the Duchess de Nemours,
the mother of the Guises (July 23rd, 1572). The Queen had secret
interviews with Maureval, a professional bravo, who drew a pension as
“tueur du Roy.”
Nothing could be done until Henry, now King of Navarre by his mother’s
death, was safely married to Marguerite. The wedding took place on August
18th, 1572. On Friday (Aug. 22nd), between ten and eleven o’clock,
Coligny left the Louvre to return to his lodging. The assassin was stationed
in a house belonging to a retainer of the Guises, at a grated window
concealed by a curtain. The Admiral was walking slowly, reading a letter.
Suddenly a shot carried away the index finger of his right hand and
wounded his left arm. He calmly pointed to the window from whence the
shot had come; and some of his suite rushed to the house, but found nothing
but a smoking arquebus. The news reached the King when he was playing
tennis. He became pallid, threw down his racquet, and went to his rooms.
Catherine closeted herself with the Duke of Anjou to discuss a situation
which was fraught with terror.[219]

§ 14. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Paris was full of Huguenot gentlemen, drawn from all parts of the country
for the wedding of their young chief with the Princess Marguerite. They
rushed to the house in which Coligny lay. The young King of Navarre and
his cousin, Henry de Condé, went to the King to demand justice, which
Charles promised would be promptly rendered. Coligny asked to see the
King, who proposed to go at once. Catherine feared to leave the two alone,
and accompanied him, attended by a number of her most trusty adherents.
Even the Duke of Guise was there. The King by Coligny’s bedside swore
again with a great oath that he would avenge the outrage in a way that it
would never be forgotten. A commission was appointed to inquire into the
affair, and they promptly discovered that retainers of the Guises were
implicated. If the investigations were pursued in the King’s temper, Guise
would probably seek to save himself by revealing Catherine’s share in the

attempted assassination. She became more and more a prey to terror. The
Huguenots grew more and more violent. At last Catherine, whether on her
own initiative or prompted by others will never be known, believed that she
could only save herself by a prompt and thorough massacre of the
Huguenots, gathered in unusual numbers in Paris.[220]
She summoned a council (Aug. 23rd), at which were present, so far as is
known, the Duke of Anjou, her favourite son, afterwards Henry III.,
Marshal Tavannes, Nevers, Nemours (the stepfather of the Guises), Birago
(Chancellor), the Count de Retz, and the Chevalier d’Angoulême—four of
them Italians. They were unanimous in advising an instant massacre.
Tavannes and Nevers, it is said, pled for and obtained the lives of the two
young Bourbons, the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé. The Count
de Retz, who was a favourite with Charles, was engaged to win the King’s
consent by appealing to his fears, and by telling him that his mother and
brother were as deeply implicated as Guise.
Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the
fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last
moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to
draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to
slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed
out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the
Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and
given their choice between death and the Mass. The other Huguenot
gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the
staircases, balls, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with
blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided
into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot
gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier
Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery,
and Jean de Ferrières, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped.
Orders were sent to complete the massacre in the provinces. At Orléans the
slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux,
Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The
total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime
Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy
thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone.

The news was variously received by Roman Catholic Europe. The German
Romanists, including the Emperor, were not slow to express their
disapprobation. But Rome was illuminated in honour of the event, a medal
was struck to commemorate the Hugonotorum Strages,[221] and Cardinal
Orsini was sent to convey to the King and Queen Mother the
congratulations of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. Philip of Spain
was delighted, and is said to have laughed outright for the first and last time
in his life. He congratulated the son on having such a mother, and the
mother on having such a son.
Catherine herself believed that the massacre had ended all her troubles. The
Huguenots had been annihilated, she thought; and it is reported that when
she saw Henry of Navarre bowing to the altar she burst out into a shrill
laugh.

§ 15. The Huguenot resistance after the Massacre.

Catherine’s difficulties were not ended. It was not so easy to exterminate
the Huguenots. Most of the leaders had perished, but the people remained,
cowed for a time undoubtedly, but soon to regain their courage. The
Protestants held the strongholds of La Rochelle and Sancerre, the one on the
coast and the other in central France. The artisans and the small
shopkeepers insisted that there should be no surrender. The sailors of La
Rochelle fraternised with the Sea-Beggars of Brill, and waged an
implacable sea-war against the ships of Spain. Nimes and Montauban
closed their gates against the soldiers of the King. Milhaud, Aubenas,
Privas, Mirabel, Anduze, Sommières, and other towns of the Viverais and of
the Cevennes became cities of refuge. All over France, the Huguenots,
although they had lost their leaders, kept together, armed themselves,
communicated with each other, maintained their religious services—though
compelled generally to meet at night.
The attempt to capture these Protestant strongholds made the Fourth
Religious War. La Rochelle was invested, beat back many assaults, was
blockaded and endured famine, and in the end compelled its enemies to
retire from its walls. Sancerre was less fortunate. After the failure of an
attempt to take it by assault, La Châtre, the general of the besieging army,
blockaded the town in the closest fashion. The citizens endured all the

utmost horrors of famine. Five hundred adults and all the children under
twelve years of age died of hunger. “Why weep,” said a boy of ten, “to see
me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother: I know that you have none.
Since God wills that I die, thus we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that
good man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?” The survivors
surrendered: their lives were spared; and on payment of a ransom of forty
thousand livres the town was not pillaged.
The war ended with the peace of Rochelle (July 1573), when liberty of
conscience was accorded to all, but the right of public worship was
permitted only to Rochelle, Nimes, Montauban, and in the houses of some
of the principal Protestant nobles. These terms were hard in comparison
with the rights which had been won before the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew; but the Huguenots had reason for rejoicing. Their cause was
still alive. Neither war, nor massacre, nor frauds innumerable had made any
impression on the great mass of the French Protestants.
The peace declared by the treaty of La Rochelle did not last long, and
indeed was never universal. The Protestants of the South used it to prepare
for a renewal of conflict. They remained under arms, perfecting their
military organisation. They divided the districts which they controlled into
regular governments, presided over by councils whose members were
elected and were the military leaders of a Protestant nation for the time
being separate from the kingdom of France. They imposed taxes on
Romanists and Protestants, and confiscated the ecclesiastical revenues.
They were able to stock their strongholds with provisions and munitions of
war, and maintain a force of twenty thousand men ready for offensive
action.
Their councils at Nimes and Montauban formulated the conditions under
which they would submit to the French Government. Nimes sent a
deputation to the King furnished with a series of written articles, in which
they demanded the free exercise of their religion in every part of France, the
maintenance at royal expense of Huguenot garrisons in all the strongholds
held by them, and the cession of two strong posts to be cities of refuge in
each of the provinces of France. The demands of the council of Montauban
went further. They added that the King must condemn the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, execute justice on those who had perpetrated it, reverse the
sentences passed on all the victims, approve of the Huguenot resistance, and

declare that he praised la singulière et admirable bonté de Dieu who had
still preserved his Protestant subjects. They required also that the rights of
the Protestant minority in France should be guaranteed by the Protestant
States of Europe—by the German Protestant Princes, by Switzerland,
England, and Scotland. They dated their document significantly August
24th—the anniversary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The deputies
refused to discuss these terms; they simply presented them. The King might
accept them; he might refuse them. They were not to be modified.
Catherine was both furious and confounded at the audacity of these
“rascals” (ces misérables), as she called them. She declared that Condé, if
he had been at the head of twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand
infantry, would never have asked for the half of what these articles
demanded. The Queen Mother found herself face to face with men on
whom she might practise all her arts in vain, very different from the
debonnaire Huguenot princes whom she had been able to cajole with
feminine graces and enervate with her “Flying Squadron.” These farmers,
citizens, artisans knew her and her Court, and called things by rude names.
She herself was a “murderess,” and her “Flying Squadron” were “fallen
women.” She had cleared away the Huguenot aristocracy to find herself in
presence of the Protestant democracy.
The worst of it was that she dared not allow the King to give them a
decided answer. A new force had been rising in France since Saint
Bartholomew’s Day—the Politiques,[222] as they were called. They put
France above religious parties, and were weary of the perpetual bloodshed;
they said that “a man does not cease to be a citizen because he is
excommunicated”; they declared that “with the men they had lost in the
religious wars they could have driven Spain out of the Low Countries.”
They chafed under the rule of “foreigners,” of the Queen Mother and her
Italians, of the Guises and their Jesuits. They were prepared to unite with
the Huguenots in order to give France peace. They only required leaders
who could represent the two sides of the coalition. If the Duke of Alençon,
the youngest brother of the King, and Henry of Navarre could escape from
the Court and raise their standards together, they were prepared to join
them.
Charles IX. died on Whitsunday 1574 of a disease which the tainted blood
of the Valois and the Médicis induced. The memories of Saint Bartholomew

also hastened his death. Private memoirs of courtiers tell us that in his last
weeks of fever he had frightful dreams by day and by night. He saw himself
surrounded by dead bodies; hideous faces covered with blood thrust
themselves forward towards his. The crime had not been so much his as his
mother’s, but he had something of a conscience, and felt its burden. “Et ma
Mère” was his last word—an appeal to his mother, whom he feared more
than his God.
On Charles’ death, Henry, Duke of Anjou, succeeded as Henry III.[223] He
was in Poland—king of that distracted country. He abandoned his crown,
evaded his subjects, and reached France in September 1574. His advent did
not change matters much. Catherine still ruled in reality. The war went on
with varying success in different parts of France. But the Duke of Anjou
(the Duke of Alençon took this title on his brother’s accession) succeeded in
escaping from Court (Sept. 15th, 1575), and the King of Navarre also
managed to elude his guardians (Feb. 3rd, 1576). Anjou joined the Prince of
Condé, who was at the head of a mixed force of Huguenots and Politiques.
Henry of Navarre went into Poitou and remained there. His first act was to
attend the Protestant worship, and immediately afterwards he renounced his
forced adhesion to Romanism. He did not join any of the parties in the field,
but sent on his own demands to be forwarded to the King along with those
of the confederates, adding to them the request that the King should aid him
to recover the Spanish part of Navarre which had been forcibly annexed to
Spain by Ferdinand of Aragon.
The escape of the two Princes led in the end to the “Peace of Monsieur,” the
terms of which were published in the Edict of Beaulieu (May 6th, 1576).
The right of public worship was given to Protestants in all towns and places
within the kingdom of France, Paris only and towns where the Court was
residing being excepted. Protestants received eight strongholds, partly as
cities of refuge and partly as guarantees. Chambers of Justice “mi-parties”
(composed of both Protestants and Roman Catholics) were established in
each Parliament. The King actually apologised for the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew, and declared that it had happened to his great regret; and all
sentences pronounced on the victims were reversed. This edict was much
more favourable to the Protestants than any that had gone before. Almost all
the Huguenots’ demands had been granted.

§ 16. The beginnings of the League.

Neither the King, who felt himself humiliated, nor the Romanists, who were
indignant, were inclined to submit long to the terms of peace. Some of the
Romanist leaders had long seen that the Huguenot enthusiasm and their
organisation were enabling an actual minority to combat, on more than
equal terms, a Romanist majority. Some of the provincial leaders had been
able to inspire their followers with zeal, and to bind them together in an
organisation by means of leagues. These provincial leagues suggested a
universal organisation, which was fostered by Henry, Duke of Guise, and by
Catherine de’ Medici. This was the first form of that celebrated League
which gave twenty years’ life to the civil war in France. The Duke of Guise
published a declaration in which he appealed to all France to associate
together in defence of the Holy Church, Catholic and Roman, and of their
King Henry III., whose authority and rights were being taken from him by
rebels. All good Catholics were required to join the association, and to
furnish arms for the accomplishment of its designs. Those who refused were
to be accounted enemies. Neutrals were to be harassed with “toutes sortes
d’offences et molestes”; open foes were to be fought strenuously. Paris was
easily won to the League, and agents were sent abroad throughout France to
enrol recruits. Henry III. himself was enrolled, and led the movement.
The King had summoned the States General to meet at Blois and hold their
first session there on Dec. 6th, 1576. The League had attended to the
elections, and the Estates declared unanimously for unity of religion. Upon
this the King announced that the Edict of Beaulieu had been extracted from
him by force, and that he did not intend to keep it. Two of the Estates, the
Clergy and the Nobles, were prepared to compel unity at any cost. The
Third Estate was divided. A minority wished the unity brought about “by
gentle and pacific ways”; the majority asked for the immediate and
complete suppression of the public worship of the Protestants, and for the
banishment of all ministers, elders, and deacons.
These decisions of the States General were taken by the Huguenots as a
declaration of war, and they promptly began to arm themselves. It was the
first war of the League, and the sixth of Religion. It ended with the Peace of
Bergerac (Sept. 15th, 1578), in which the terms granted to the Huguenots

were rather worse than those of the Edict of Beaulieu. A seventh war
ensued, terminated by the Peace of Fleix (Nov. 1580).
The Duke of Anjou died (June 10th, 1584), and the King had no son. The
heir to the throne, according to the Salic Law, which excluded females, was
Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. On the death of Anjou, Henry III. found
himself face to face with this fact. He knew and felt that he was the
guardian of the dynastic rights of the French throne, and that his duty was to
acknowledge Henry of Navarre as his successor. He accordingly sent one of
his favourites, Éperon, to prevail upon Henry of Navarre to become a
Roman Catholic and come to Court. Henry refused to do either.

§ 17. The League becomes disloyal.[224]

Meanwhile the Romanist nobles were taking their measures. Some of them
met at Nancy towards the close of 1584 to reconstruct the League. They
resolved to exclude the Protestant Bourbons from the throne, and proclaim
the Cardinal Bourbon as the successor of Henry III. They hoped to obtain a
Bull from the Pope authorising this selection; and they received the support
of Philip of Spain in the Treaty of Joinville (Dec. 31st, 1584).
Paris did not wait for the sanction or recommendation of the nobles. A
contemporary anonymous pamphlet, which is the principal source of our
information, describes how four men, three of them ecclesiastics, met
together to found the League of Paris. They discussed the names of suitable
members, and, having selected a nucleus of trustworthy associates, they
proceeded to elect a secret council of eight or nine who were to direct and
control everything. The active work of recruiting was superintended by six
associates, of whom one, the Sieur de la Rocheblond, was a member of the
secret council. Soon all the most fanatical elements of the population of
Paris belonged to this secret society, sworn to obey blindly the orders of the
mysterious council who from a concealed background directed everything.
The corporations of the various trades were won to the League; the butchers
of Paris, for example, furnished a band of fifteen hundred resolute and
dangerous men. Trusty emissaries were sent to the large towns of France,
and secret societies on the plan of the one in Paris were formed and
affiliated with the mother-society in Paris, all bound to execute the orders of
the secret council of the capital. The Sieur de la Rocheblond, whose brain

had planned the whole organisation, was the medium of communication
with the Romanist Princes; and through him Henry, Duke of Guise, le
Balafré as he was called from a scar on his face, was placed in command of
this new and formidable instrument, to be wielded as he thought best for the
extirpation of the Protestantism of France.
The King had published an edict forbidding all armed assemblies, and this
furnished the Leaguers with a pretext for sending forth their manifesto:
Déclaration des causes qui ont meu Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon
et les Pairs, Princes, Seigneurs, villes et communautez catholiques de ce
royaume de France: De s’opposer à ceux qui par tous moyens s’efforcent
de subvertir la religion catholique et l’Estat (30 Mars 1585). It was a
skilfully drafted document, setting forth the danger to religion in the
foreground, but touching on all the evils and jealousies which had arisen
from the favouritism of Henry III. Guise at once began to enrol troops and
commence open hostilities; and almost all the great towns of France and
most of the provinces in the North and in the Centre declared for the
League.
Henry III. was greatly alarmed. With the help of his mother he negotiated a
treaty with the Leaguers, in which he promised to revoke all the earlier
Edicts of Toleration, to prohibit the exercise of Protestant public worship
throughout the kingdom, to banish the ministers, and to give all Protestants
the choice between becoming Roman Catholics or leaving the realm within
six months (Treaty of Nemours, July 7th, 1585). These terms were
embodied in an edict dated July 18th, 1585. The Pope, Sixtus V., thereupon
published a Bull, which declared that the King of Navarre and the Prince of
Condé, being heretics, were incapable of succeeding to the throne of
France, deprived them of their estates, and absolved all their vassals from
allegiance. The King of Navarre replied to “Monsieur Sixtus, self-styled
Pope, saving His Holiness,” and promised to avenge the insult done to
himself and to the Parlements of France.
“The war of the three Henrys,” from Henry III., Henry of Guise, and Henry
of Navarre, began in the later months of 1585. It was in some respects a
triangular fight; for although the King and the Guises were both ostensibly
combating the Huguenots, the Leaguers, headed by Guises, and the
Loyalists, were by no means whole-hearted allies. It began unfavourably for
the Protestants, but as it progressed the skilful generalship of the King of

Navarre became more and more apparent—at Coutras (Oct. 20th, 1587) he
almost annihilated the royalist army. The King made several ineffectual
attempts to win the Protestant leader to his side. Navarre would never
consent to abjure his faith, and Henry III. made that an absolute condition.
While the war was going on in the west and centre of France, the League
was strengthening its organisation and perfecting its plans. It had become
more and more hostile to Henry III., and had become a secret revolutionary
society. It drafted a complete programme for the immediate future. The
cities and districts of France which felt themselves specially threatened by
the Huguenots were to beseech the King to raise levies for their protection.
If he refused or procrastinated, they were to raise the troops themselves, to
be commanded by officers in whom the League had confidence. They could
then compel the King to place himself at the head of this army of the
Leaguers, or show himself to be their open enemy by refusing. If the King
died childless, the partisans of the League were to gather at Orléans and
Paris, and were there to elect the Cardinal de Bourbon as the King of
France. The Pope and the King of Spain were to be at once informed, when
it had been arranged that His Holiness would send his benediction, and that
His Majesty would assist them with troops and supplies. A new form of
oath was imposed on all the associates of the League. They were to swear
allegiance to the King so long as he should show himself to be a good
Catholic and refrained from favouring heretics. These instructions were sent
down from the mother-society in Paris to the provinces, and the affiliated
societies were recommended to keep in constant communication with Paris.
Madame de Montpensier, sister to the Guises, at the same time directed the
work of a band of preachers whose business it was to inflame the minds of
the people in the capital and the provinces against the King and the
Huguenots. She boasted that she did more work for the cause than her
brothers were doing by the sword.
The Guises, with this force behind them, tried to force the King to make
new concessions—to publish the decisions of the Council of Trent in France
(a thing that had not been done); to establish the Inquisition in France; to
order the execution of all Huguenot prisoners who would not promise to
abjure their religion; and to remove from the armies all officers of whom
the League did not approve. The mother-society in Paris prepared for his
refusal by organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was

called “The Sixteen,” being one for each of the sixteen sections of Paris.
This government was under the orders of Guise, who communicated with
them through an agent of his called Mayneville. Plot after plot was made to
get possession of the King’s person; and but for the activity and information
of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of police who managed to secure private
information, they would have been successful.

§ 18. The Day of Barricades.[225]

The King redoubled his guards, and ordered four thousand Swiss troops
which he had stationed at Lagny into the suburbs of Paris. The Parisian
Leaguers in alarm sent for the Duke of Guise; and Guise, in spite of a
prohibitive order from the King, entered the city. When he was recognised
he was received with acclamations by the Parisian crowd. The Queen-
Mother induced the King to receive him, which he did rather ungraciously.
Officers and men devoted to the League crowded into Paris. The King,
having tried in vain to prevent the entry of all suspected persons, at last
ordered the Swiss into Paris (May 12th, 1588). The citizens flew to arms,
and converted Paris into a stronghold. It was “the day of Barricades.”
Chains were stretched across the streets, and behind them were piled beams,
benches, carts, great barrels filled with stones or gravel. Houses were loop-
holed and windows protected. Behind these defences men were stationed
with arquebuses; and the women and children were provided with heaps of
stones. Guise had remained in his house, but his officers were to be seen
moving through the crowds and directing the defence. The Swiss troops
found themselves caught in a trap, and helpless. Henry III. was compelled
to ask Guise to interfere in order to save his soldiers. The King had to
undergo further humiliation. The citizens proposed to attack the Louvre and
seize the King’s person. Guise had to be appealed to again. He had an
interview with the King on the 13th, at which Henry III. was forced to agree
to all the demands of the League, and to leave the conduct of the war
against the Huguenots in the hands of the leader of the League. After the
interview the King was able to escape secretly from Paris.
The day of the “Barricades” had proved to Henry III. that the League was
master in his capital. The meeting of the States General at Blois (Oct. 1588)
was to show him that the country had also turned against him.

The elections had been looked after by the Guises, and had taken place
while the impression produced by the revolt of Paris was at its height. The
League commanded an immense majority in all the three Estates. The
business before them was grave. The finances of the kingdom were in
disorder; favouritism had not been got rid of; and no one could trust the
King’s word. Above all, the religious question was embittering every mind.
The Estates met under the influence of a religious exaltation fanned by the
priests. On the 9th of Oct. representatives of the three Estates went to Mass
together. During the communion the assistant clergy chanted the well-
known hymns,—Pange lingua gloriosi, O salutaris Hostia, Ave verum
Corpus natum,—and the excitement was immense. The members of the
Estates had never been so united.
Yet the King had a moment of unwonted courage. He had resolved to
denounce the League as the source of the disorders in the kingdom. He
declared that he would not allow a League to exist within the realm. He
only succeeded in making the leaders furious. His bravado soon ceased. The
Cardinal de Bourbon compelled him to omit from the published version of
his speech the objectionable expressions. The Estates forced him to swear
that he would not permit any religion within the kingdom but the Roman.
This done, he was received with cries of Vive le Roi, and was accompanied
to his house with acclamations. But he was compelled to see the Duke of
Guise receive the office of Lieutenant-General, which placed the army
under his command; and he felt that he would never be “master in his own
house” until that man had been removed from his path.
The news of the completeness of the destruction of the Armada had been
filtering through France; the fear of Spain was to some extent removed, and
England might help the King if he persisted in a policy of tolerating his
Protestant subjects. It is probable that he confided his project of getting rid
of Guise to some of his more intimate councillors, and that they assured
him that it would be impossible to remove such a powerful subject by legal
means. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal of Guise were summoned to
a meeting of the Council. They had scarcely taken their seats when they
were asked to see the King in his private apartments. There Guise was
assassinated, and the Cardinal arrested, and slain the next day.[226] The
Cardinal de Bourbon and the young Prince de Joinville (now Duke of Guise
by his father’s death) were arrested and imprisoned. Orders were given to

arrest the Duchess of Nemours (Guise’s mother), the Duke and Duchess of
Elbœuf, the Count de Brissac, and other prominent Leaguers. The King’s
guards invaded the sittings of the States General to carry out these orders.
The bodies of the two Guises were burnt, and the ashes thrown into the
Loire.
The news of the assassination raised the wildest rage in Paris. The League
proclaimed itself a revolutionary society. The city organised itself in its
sections. A council was appointed for each section to strengthen the hands
of the “Sixteen.” Preachers caused their audiences to swear that they would
spend the last farthing in their purses and the last drop of blood in their
bodies to avenge the slaughtered princes. The Sorbonne in solemn conclave
declared that the actions of Henry III. had absolved his subjects from their
allegiance. The “Sixteen” drove from Parlement all suspected persons; and,
thus purged, the Parlement of Paris ranged itself on the side of the
revolution. The Duke of Mayenne, the sole surviving brother of Henry of
Guise, was summoned to Paris. An assembly of the citizens of the capital
elected a Council General of the Union of Catholics to manage the affairs
of the State and to confer with all the Catholic towns and provinces of
France. Deputies sent by these towns and provinces were to be members of
the Council. The Duke of Mayenne was appointed by the Council the
Lieutenant-General of the State and Crown of France. The new
Government had its seal—the Seal of the Kingdom of France. The larger
number of the great towns of France adhered to this provisional and
revolutionary Government.
In the midst of these tumults Catherine de’ Medici died (Jan. 5th, 1589).

§ 19. The King takes refuge with the Huguenots.

The miserable King had no resource left but to throw himself upon the
protection of the Protestants. He hesitated at first, fearing threatened papal
excommunication. Henry of Navarre’s bearing during these months of
anxiety had been admirable. After the meeting of the States General at
Blois, he had issued a stirring appeal to the nation, pleading for peace—the
one thing needed for the distracted and fevered country. He now assured the
King of his loyalty, and promised that he would never deny to Roman
Catholics that liberty of conscience and worship which he claimed. A treaty

was arranged, and the King of Navarre went to meet Henry III. at Tours. He
arrived just in time. Mayenne at the head of an avenging army of Leaguers
had started as soon as the provisional government had been established in
Paris. He had taken by assault a suburb of the town, and was about to attack
the city of Tours itself, when he found the Protestant vanguard guarding the
bridge over the Loire, and had to retreat. He was slowly forced back
towards Paris. The battle of Senlis, in which a much smaller force of
Huguenots routed the Duke d’Aumale, who had been reinforced by the
Parisian militia, opened the way to Paris. The King of Navarre pressed on.
Town after town was taken, and the forces of the two kings, increased by
fourteen thousand Swiss and Germans, were soon able to seize the bridge of
St. Cloud and invest the capital on the south and west (July 29th, 1589). An
assault was fixed for Aug. 2nd.
Since the murder of the Guises, Paris had been a caldron of seething
excitement. The whole population, “avec douleur et gemissements bien
grands,” had assisted at the funeral service for “the Martyrs,” and the
baptism of the posthumous son of the slaughtered Duke had been a civic
ceremony. The Bull “monitory” of Pope Sixtus V., posted up in Rome on
May 24th, which directed Henry III. on pain of excommunication to release
the imprisoned prelates within ten days, and to appear either personally or
by proxy within sixty days before the Curia to answer for the murder of a
Prince of the Church, had fanned the excitement. Almost every day the
Parisians saw processions of students, of women, of children, defiling
through their streets. They marched from shrine to shrine, with naked feet,
clad only in their shirts, defying the cold of winter. Parishioners dragged
their priests out of bed to head nocturnal processions. The hatred of Henry
III. became almost a madness. The Cordeliers decapitated his portraits.
Parish priests made images of the King in wax, placed them on their altars,
and practised on them magical incantations, in the hope of doing deadly
harm to the living man. Bands of children carried lighted candles, which
they extinguished to cries of, “God extinguish thus the race of the Valois.”
Among the most excited members of this fevered throng was a young
Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément, by birth a peasant, of scanty intelligence,
and rough, violent manners. His excitement grew with the perils of the city.
He consulted a theologian in whom he had confidence, and got from him a
guarded answer that it might be lawful to slay a tyrant. He prayed, fasted,

went through a course of maceration of the body. He saw visions. He
believed that he heard voices, and that he received definite orders to give
his life in order to slay the King. He confided his purpose to friends, who
approved of it and helped his preparations. He was able to leave the city, to
pass through the beleaguering lines, and to get private audience of the King.
He presented a letter, and while Henry was reading it stabbed him in the
lower part of the body. The deed done, the monk raised himself to his full
height, extended his arms to form himself into a crucifix, and received
without flinching his deathblow from La Guesle and other attendants (Aug.
1st, 1589).[227]
The King lingered until the following morning, and then expired,
commending Henry of Navarre to his companions as his legitimate
successor.
The news of the assassination was received in Paris with wild delight. The
Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises, and the Duchess de
Montpensier, their sister, went everywhere in the streets describing “the
heroic act of Jacques Clément.” The former mounted the steps of the High
Altar in the church of the Cordeliers to proclaim the news to the people.
The citizens, high and low, brought out their tables into the streets, and they
drank, sang, shouted and danced in honour of the news. They swore that
they would never accept a Protestant king[228] and the Cardinal de Bourbon,
still a prisoner, was proclaimed as Charles x.
At Tours, on the other hand, the fact that the heir to the throne was a
Protestant, threw the Roman Catholic nobles into a state of perplexity. They
had no sympathy with the League, but many felt that they could not serve a
Protestant king. They pressed round the new King, beseeching him to
abjure his faith at once. Henry refused to do what would humiliate himself,
and could not be accepted as an act of sincerity. On the other hand, the
nobles of Champagne, Picardy, and the Isle of France sent assurances of
allegiance; the Duke of Montpensier, the husband of the Leaguer Duchess,
promised his support; and the Swiss mercenaries declared that they would
serve for two months without pay.

§ 20. The Declaration of Henry IV.[229]

Thus encouraged, Henry published his famous declaration (Aug. 4th, 1589).
He promised that the Roman Catholic would remain the religion of the
realm, and that he would attempt no innovations. He declared that he was
willing to be instructed in its tenets, and that within six months, if it were
possible, he would summon a National Council. The Roman Catholics
would be retained in their governments and charges; the Protestants would
keep the strongholds which were at present in their hands; but all fortified
places when reduced would be entrusted to Roman Catholics and none
other. This declaration was signed by two Princes of the Blood, the Prince
of Conti and the Duke of Montpensier; by three Dukes and Peers,
Longueville, Luxembourg-Piney, and Rohan-Montbazon; by two Marshals
of France, Biron and d’Aumont; and by several great officers.
Notwithstanding, the defections were serious; all the Parlements save that
of Bordeaux thundered against the heretic King; all the great towns save
Tours, Bordeaux, Châlons, Langres, Compiègne, and Clermont declared for
the League. The greater part of the kingdom was in revolt. The royalist
troops dwindled away. It was hopeless to think of attacking Paris, and
Henry IV. marched for Normandy with scarcely seven thousand men. He
wished to be on the sea coast in hope of succour from England.
The Duke of Mayenne followed him with an army of thirty thousand men.
He had promised to the Parisians to throw the “Bearnese” into the sea, or to
bring him in chains to Paris, But it was not so easy to catch the “Bearnese.”
In the series of marches, countermarches, and skirmishes which is known as
the battle of Arques, the advantage was on the side of the King; and when
Mayenne attempted to take Dieppe by assault, he was badly defeated (Sept.
24th, 1589). Then followed marches and countermarches; the King now
threatening Paris and then retreating, until at last the royalist troops and the
Leaguers met at Ivry. The King had two thousand cavalry and eight
thousand infantry to meet eight thousand cavalry and twelve thousand
infantry (including seventeen hundred Spanish troops sent by the Duke of
Parma) under the command of Mayenne. The battle resulted in a surprising
and decisive victory for the King. Mayenne and his cousin d’Aumale
escaped only by the swiftness of their horses (March 14th, 1590).
It is needless to say much about the war or about the schemes of parties.
Henry invested Paris, and had almost starved it into surrender, when it was
revictualled by an army led from the Low Countries by the Duke of Parma.

Henry took town after town, and gradually isolated the capital. In 1590
(May 10th) the old Cardinal Bourbon (Charles X.) died, and the Leaguers
lost even the semblance of a legitimate king. The more fanatical members
of the party, represented by the “Sixteen” of Paris, would have been content
to place France under the dominion of Spain rather than see a heretic king.
The Duke of Mayenne had long cherished dreams that the crown might
come to him. But the great mass of the influential people of France who had
not yet professed allegiance to Henry IV. (and many who had) had an
almost equal dread of Spanish domination and of a heretic ruler.

§ 21. Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic.

Henry at last resolved to conform to the Roman Catholic religion as the
only means of giving peace to his distracted kingdom. He informed the
loyalist Archbishop of Bourges of his intention to be instructed in the
Roman Catholic religion with a view to conversion. The Archbishop was
able to announce this at the conference of Suresnes, and the news spread
instantly over France. With his usual tact, Henry wrote with his own hand to
several of the parish priests of Paris announcing his intention, and invited
them to meet him at Mantes to give him instruction. At least one of them
had been a furious Leaguer, and was won to be an enthusiastic loyalist.
The ceremony of the reception of Henry IV. into the Roman Catholic
Church took place at Saint Denis, about four and a half miles to the north of
Paris. The scene had all the appearance of some popular festival. The
ancient church in which the Kings of France had for generations been
buried, in which Jeanne d’Arc had hung up her arms, was decked with
splendid tapestries, and the streets leading to it festooned with flowers.
Multitudes of citizens had come from rebel Paris to swell the throng and to
shout Vive le Roi! as Henry, escorted by a brilliant procession of nobles and
guards, passed slowly to the church. The clergy, headed by the Archbishop
of Bourges, met him at the door. The King dismounted, knelt, swore to live
and die in the catholic apostolic and Roman religion, and renounced all the
heresies which it condemned. The Archbishop gave him absolution, took
him by the hand and led him into the church. There, kneeling before the
High Altar, the King repeated his oath, confessed, and communicated.
France had now a Roman Catholic as well as a legitimate King. Even if it

be admitted that Henry IV. was not a man of any depth of religious feeling,
the act of abjuration must have been a humiliation for the son of Jeanne
d’Albret. He never was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and his
well-known saying, that “Paris was well worth a Mass,” had as much
bitterness in it as gaiety. He had paled with suppressed passion at Tours
(1589) when the Roman Catholic nobles had urged him to become a
Romanist. Had the success which followed his arms up to the battle of Ivry
continued unbroken, it is probable that the ceremony at Saint Denis would
never have taken place. But Parma’s invasion of France, which compelled
the King to raise the siege of Paris, was the beginning of difficulties which
seemed insurmountable. The dissensions of parties within the realm, and the
presence of foreigners on the soil of France (Walloon, Spanish, Neapolitan,
and Savoyard), were bringing France to the verge of dissolution. Henry
believed that there was only one way to end the strife, and he sacrificed his
convictions to his patriotism.
With Henry’s change of religion the condition of things changed as if by
magic. The League seemed to dissolve. Tenders of allegiance poured in
from all sides, from nobles, provinces, and towns. Rheims was still in
possession of the Guises, and the anointing and crowning took place at
Chartres (Feb. 27th, 1594). The manifestations of loyalty increased.
On the evening of the day on which Henry had been received into the
Roman Catholic Church at Saint Denis, he had recklessly ridden up to the
crest of the height of Montmartre and looked down on Paris, which was still
in the hands of the League. The feelings of the Parisians were also
changing. The League was seamed with dissensions; Mayenne had
quarrelled with the “Sixteen,” and the partisans of these fanatics of the
League had street brawls with the citizens of more moderate opinions.
Parlement took courage and denounced the presence of Spanish soldiers
within the capital. The loyalists opened the way for the royal troops, Henry
entered Paris (March 22nd), and marched to Notre Dame, where the clergy
chanted the Te Deum. From the cathedral he rode to the Louvre through
streets thronged with people, who pressed up to his very stirrups to see their
King, and made the tall houses re-echo with their loyalist shoutings. Such a
royal entry had not been seen for generations, and took everyone by
surprise. Next day the foreign troops left the city. The King watched their
departure from an open window in the Louvre, and as their chiefs passed he

called out gaily, “My compliments to your Master. You need not come
back.”
With the return of Paris to fealty, almost all signs of disaffection departed;
and the King’s proclamation of amnesty for all past rebellions completed
the conquest of his people. France was again united after thirty years of
civil war.

§ 22. The Edict of Nantes.

The union of all Frenchmen to accept Henry IV. as their King had not
changed the legal position of the Protestants. The laws against them were
still in force; they had nothing but the King’s word promising protection to
trust to. The war with Spain delayed matters, but when peace was made the
time came for Henry to fulfil his pledges to his former companions. They
had been chafing under the delay. At a General Assembly held at Mantes
(October 1593-January 1594), the members had renewed their oath to live
and to die true to their confession of faith, and year by year a General
Assembly met to discuss their political disabilities as well as to conduct
their ecclesiastical business. They had divided France into nine divisions
under provincial synods, and had the appearance to men of that century of a
kingdom within a kingdom. They demanded equal civic rights with their
Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and guarantees for their protection. At
length, in 1597, four delegates were appointed with full powers to confer
with the King. Out of these negotiations came the Edict of Nantes, the
Charter of French Protestantism.
This celebrated edict was drawn up in ninety-five more general articles,
which were signed on April 13th, and in fifty-six more particular articles
which were signed on May 2nd (1598). Two Brevets, dated 13th and 30th of
April, were added, dealing with the treatment of Protestant ministers, and
with the strongholds given to the Protestants. The Articles were verified and
registered by Parlements; the Brevets were guaranteed simply by the King’s
word.
The Edict of Nantes codified and enlarged the rights given to the Protestants
of France by the Edict of Poitiers (1577), the Convention of Nérac (1578),
the treaty of Fleix (1580), the Declaration of Saint-Cloud (1589), the Edict

of Mantes (1591), the Articles of Mantes (1593), and the Edict of Saint-
Germain (1594).
It secured complete liberty of conscience everywhere within the realm, to
the extent that no one was to be persecuted or molested in any way because
of his religion, nor be compelled to do anything contrary to its tenets; and
this carried with it the right of private or secret worship. The full and free
right of public worship was granted in all places in which it existed during
the years 1596 and 1597, or where it had been granted by the Edict of
Poitiers interpreted by the Convention of Nérac and the treaty of Fleix
(some two hundred towns); and, in addition, in two places within every
bailliage and sénéchaussée in the realm. It was also permitted in the
principal castles of Protestant seigneurs hauts justiciers (some three
thousand), whether the proprietor was in residence or not, and in their other
castles, the proprietor being in residence; to nobles who were not hauts
justiciers, provided the audience did not consist of more than thirty persons
over and above relations of the family. Even at the Court the high officers
of the Crown, the great nobles, all governors and lieutenants-general, and
captains of the guards, had the liberty of worship in their apartments
provided the doors were kept shut and there was no loud singing of psalms,
noise, or open scandal.
Protestants were granted full civil rights and protection, entry into all
universities, schools, and hospitals, and admission to all public offices. The
Parlement of Paris admitted six Protestant councillors. And Protestant
ministers were granted the exemptions from military service and such
charges as the Romanist clergy enjoyed. Special Chambers (Chambres
d’Édit) were established in the Parlements to try cases in which Protestants
were interested. In the Parlement of Paris this Chamber consisted of six
specially chosen Roman Catholics and one Protestant; in other Parlements,
the Chambers were composed of equal numbers of Romanists and
Protestants (mi-parties). The Protestants were permitted to hold their
ecclesiastical assemblies—consistories, colloquies, and synods, national
and provincial; they were even allowed to meet to discuss political
questions, provided they first secured the permission of the King.
They remained in complete control of two hundred towns, including La
Rochelle, Montauban, and Montpellier, strongholds of exceptional strength.
They were to retain these places until 1607, but the right was prolonged for

five years more. The State paid the expenses of the troops which garrisoned
these Protestant fortified places; it paid the governors, who were always
Protestants. When it is remembered that the royal army in time of peace did
not exceed ten thousand men, and that the Huguenots could raise twenty-
five thousand troops, it will be seen that Henry IV. did his utmost to provide
guarantees against a return to a reign of intolerance.
Protected in this way, the Huguenot Church of France speedily took a
foremost place among the Protestant Churches of Europe. Theological
colleges were established at Sedan, Montauban, and Saumur. Learning and
piety flourished, and French theology was always a counterpoise to the
narrow Reformed Scholastic of Switzerland and of Holland.

CHAPTER V.

THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.[230]

§ 1. The Political Situation.

It was not until 1581 that the United Provinces took rank as a Protestant
nation, notwithstanding the fact that the Netherlands furnished the first
martyrs of the Reformation in the persons of Henry Voes and John Esch,
Augustinian monks, who were burnt at Antwerp (July 31st, 1523).

“As they were led to the stake they cried with a loud voice that they
were Christians; and when they were fastened to it, and the fire was
kindled, they rehearsed the twelve articles of the Creed, and after that
the hymn Te Deum laudamus, which each of them sang verse by verse
alternately until the flames deprived them both of voice and life.”[231]

The struggle for religious liberty, combined latterly with one for national
independence from Spain, lasted therefore for almost sixty years.
When the lifelong duel between Charles the Bold of Burgundy and Louis
XI. of France ended with the death of the former on the battlefield under the
walls of Nancy (January 4th, 1477), Louis was able to annex to France a
large portion of the heterogeneous possessions of the Dukes of Burgundy,
and Mary of Burgundy carried the remainder as her marriage portion (May
1477) to Maximilian of Austria, the future Emperor. Speaking roughly, and
not quite accurately, those portions of the Burgundian lands which had been
fiefs of France went to Louis, while Mary and Maximilian retained those
which were fiefs of the Empire. The son of Maximilian and Mary, Philip the
Handsome, married Juana (August 1496), the second daughter and ultimate
heiress of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, and their son was Charles V.,
Emperor of Germany (b. February 24th, 1500), who inherited the
Netherlands from his father and Spain from his mother, and thus linked the
Netherlands to Spain. Philip died in 1506, leaving Charles, a boy of six

years of age, the ruler of the Netherlands. His paternal aunt, Margaret, the
daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, governed in the Netherlands during
his minority, and, owing to Juana’s illness (an illness ending in madness),
mothered her brother’s children. Margaret’s regency ended in 1515, and the
earlier history of the Reformation in the Netherlands belongs either to the
period of the personal rule of Charles or to that of the Regents whom he
appointed to act for him.
The land, a delta of great rivers liable to overflow their banks, or a coast-
line on which the sea made continual encroachment, produced a people
hardy, strenuous, and independent. Their struggles with nature had braced
their faculties. Municipal life had struck its roots deeply into the soil of the
Netherlands, and its cities could vie with those of Italy in industry and
intelligence. The southern provinces were the home of the Trouvères.[232]
Jan van-Ruysbroec, the most heart-searching of speculative Mystics, had
been a curate of St. Gudule’s in Brussels. His pupil, Gerard Groot, had
founded the lay-community of the Brethren of the Common Lot for the
purpose of spreading Christian education among the laity; and the schools
and convents of the Brethren had spread through the Netherlands and
central Germany. Thomas à Kempis, the author of the Imitatio Christi, had
lived most of his long life of ninety years in a small convent at Zwolle,
within the territories of Utrecht. Men who have been called “Reformers
before the Reformation,” John Pupper of Goch and John Wessel, both
belonged to the Netherlands. Art flourished there in the fifteenth century in
the persons of Hubert and Jan van Eyck and of Hans Memling. The
Chambers of Oratory (Rederijkers) to begin with probably unions for the
performance of miracle plays or moralities, became confraternities not
unlike the societies of meistersänger in Germany, and gradually acquired
the character of literary associations, which diffused not merely culture, but
also habits of independent thinking among the people.
Intellectual life had become less exuberant in the end of the fifteenth
century; but the Netherlands, nevertheless, produced Alexander Hegius, the
greatest educational reformer of his time, and Erasmus the prince of the
Humanists. Nor can the influence of the Chambers of Oratory have died
out, for they had a great effect on the Reformation movement.[233]
When Charles assumed the government of the Netherlands, he found
himself at the head of a group of duchies, lordships, counties, and

municipalities which had little appearance of a compact principality, and he
applied himself, like other princes of his time in the same situation, to give
them a unity both political and territorial. He was so successful that he was
able to hand over to his son, Philip II. of Spain, an almost thoroughly
organised State. The divisions which Charles largely overcame reappeared
to some extent in the revolt against Philip and Romanism, and therefore in a
measure concern the history of the Reformation. How Charles made his
scattered Netherland inheritance territorially compact need not be told in
detail. Friesland was secured (1515); the acquisition of temporal
sovereignty over the ecclesiastical province of Utrecht (1527) united
Holland with Friesland; Gronningen and the lands ruled by that turbulent
city placed themselves under the government of Charles (1536); and the
death of Charles of Egmont (1538), Count of Gueldres, completed the
unification of the northern and central districts. The vague hold which
France kept in some of the southern portions of the country was gradually
loosened. Charles failed in the south-east. The independent principality of
Lorraine lay between Luxemburg and Franche-Comté, and the Netherland
Government could not seize it by purchase, treaty, or conquest. One and the
same system of law regulated the rights and the duties of the whole
population; and all the provinces were united into one principality by the
reorganisation of a States General, which met almost annually, and which
had a real if vaguely defined power to regulate the taxation of the country.
But although political and geographical difficulties might be more or less
overcome, others remained which were not so easily disposed of. One set
arose from the fact that the seventeen provinces were divided by race and
by language. The Dutchmen in the north were different in interests and in
sentiment from the Flemings in the centre; and both had little in common
with the French-speaking provinces in the south. The other was due to the
differing boundaries of the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions. When
Charles began to rule in 1515, the only territorial see was Arras. Tournai,
Utrecht, and Cambrai became territorial before the abdication of Charles.
But the confusion between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction may be seen
at a glance when it is remembered that a great part of the Frisian lands were
subject to the German Sees of Münster, Minden, Paderborn, and
Osnabrück; and that no less than six bishops, none of them belonging to the
Netherlands, divided the ecclesiastical rule over Luxemburg. Charles’

proposals to establish six new bishoprics, plans invariably thwarted by the
Roman Curia, were meant to give the Low Countries a national episcopate.

§ 2. The Beginnings of the Reformation.

The people of the Netherlands had been singularly prepared for the great
religious revival of the sixteenth century by the work of the Brethren of the
Common Lot and their schools. It was the aim of Gerard Groot, their
founder, and also of Florentius Radevynszoon, his great educational
assistant, to see “that the root of study and the mirror of life must, in the
first place, be the Gospel of Christ.” Their pupils were taught to read the
Bible in Latin, and the Brethren contended publicly for translations of the
Scriptures in the vulgar tongues. There is evidence to show that the Vulgate
was well known in the Netherlands in the end of the fifteenth century, and a
translation of the Bible into Dutch was published at Delft in 1477[234].
Small tracts against Indulgences, founded probably on the reasonings of
Pupper and Wessel, had been in circulation before Luther had nailed his
Theses to the door of All Saints’ church in Wittenberg. Hendrik of Zutphen,
Prior of the Augustinian Eremite convent at Antwerp, had been a pupil of
Staupitz, a fellow student with Luther, and had spread Evangelical teaching
not only among his order, but throughout the town.[235] It need be no matter
for surprise, then, that Luther’s writings were widely circulated in the
Netherlands, and that between 1513 and 1531 no fewer than twenty-five
translations of the Bible or of the New Testament had appeared in Dutch,
Flemish, and French.
When Aleander was in the Netherlands, before attending the Diet of Worms
he secured the burning of eighty Lutheran and other books at Louvain;[236]
and when he came back ten months later, he had regular literary auto-da-
fés. On Charles’ return from the Diet of Worms, he issued a proclamation to
all his subjects in the Netherlands against Luther, his books and his
followers, and Aleander made full use of the powers it gave. Four hundred
Lutheran books were burnt at Antwerp, three hundred of them seized by the
police in the stalls of the booksellers, and one hundred handed over by the
owners; three hundred were burnt at Ghent, “part of them printed here and
part in Germany,” says the Legate; and he adds that “many of them were
very well bound, and one gorgeously in velvet.” About a month later he is

forced to confess that these burnings had not made as much impression as
he had hoped, and that he wishes the Emperor would “burn alive half a
dozen Lutherans and confiscate their property.” Such a proceeding would
make all see him to be the really Christian prince that he is.[237]
Next year (1522) Charles established the Inquisition within the seventeen
provinces. It was a distinctively civil institution, and this was perhaps due
to the fact that there was little correspondence between the civil and
ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Netherlands; but it must not be forgotten
that the Kings of Spain had used the Holy Office for the purpose of
stamping out political and local opposition, and also that the civil courts
were usually more energetic and more severe than the ecclesiastical. The
man appointed was unworthy of any place of important trust. Francis van de
Hulst, although he had been the Prince’s counsellor in Brabant, was a man
accused both of bigamy and murder, and was hopelessly devoid of tact. He
quarrelled violently with the High Court of Holland; and the Regent,
Margaret of Austria, who had resumed her functions, found herself
constantly compromised by his continual defiance of local privileges. He
was a “wonderful enemy to learning,” says Erasmus. His colleague, Nicolas
van Egmont, a Carmelite monk, is described by the same scholar as “a
madman with a sword put into his hand who hates me worse than he does
Luther.” The two men discredited the Inquisition from its beginning.
Erasmus affected to believe that the Emperor could not know what they
were doing.
The first victim was Cornelius Graphæus, town clerk of Antwerp, a poet
and Humanist, a friend of Erasmus; and his offence was that he had
published an edition of John Pupper of Goch’s book, entitled the Liberty of
the Christian Religion, with a preface of his own. The unfortunate man was
set on a scaffold in Brussels, compelled to retract certain propositions which
were said to be contained in the preface, and obliged to throw the preface
itself into a fire kindled on the scaffold for the purpose. He was dismissed
from his office, declared incapable of receiving any other employment,
compelled to repeat his recantation at Antwerp, imprisoned for two years,
and finally banished.[238]
The earliest deaths were those of Henry Voes and John Esch, who have
already been mentioned. Their Prior, Hendrik of Zutphen, escaped from the
dungeon in which he had been confined. Luther commemorated them in a

long hymn, entitled A New Song of the two Martyrs of Christ burnt at
Brussels by the Sophists of Louvain:

“Der erst recht wol Johannes heyst,
So reych an Gottes hulden
Seyn Bruder Henrch nach dem geyst,
Eyn rechter Christ on schulden:
Vonn dysser welt gescheyden synd,
Sye hand die kron erworben,
Recht wie die frumen gottes kind
Fur seyn wort synd gestorben,
Sein Marter synd sye worden.”[239]

Charles issued proclamation after proclamation, each of increasing severity.
It was forbidden to print any books unless they had been first examined and
approved by the censors (April 1st, 1524). “All open and secret meetings in
order to read and preach the Gospel, the Epistles of St. Paul, and other
spiritual writings,” were forbidden (Sept. 25th, 1525), as also to discuss the
Holy Faith, the Sacraments, the Power of the Pope and Councils, “in private
houses and at meals.” This was repeated on March 14th, 1526, and on July
17th there was issued a long edict, said to have been carefully drafted by the
Emperor himself, forbidding all meetings to read or preach about the
Gospel or other holy writings in Latin, Flemish, or Walloon. In the
preamble it is said that ignorant persons have begun to expound Scripture,
that even regular and secular clergy have presumed to teach the “errors and
sinister doctrines of Luther and his adherents,” and that heresies are
increasing in the land. Then followed edicts against unlicensed books, and
against monks who had left their cloisters (Jan. 28th, 1528); against the
possession of Lutheran books, commanding them upon pain of death to be
delivered up (Oct. 14th, 1529); against printing unlicensed books—the
penalties being a public whipping on the scaffold, branding with a red-iron,
or the loss of an eye or a hand, at the discretion of the judge (Dec. 7th,
1530); against heretics “who are more numerous than ever,” against certain
books of which a long list is given, and against certain hymns which
increase the zeal of the heretics (Sept. 22nd, 1540); against printing and
distributing unlicensed books in the Italian, Spanish, or English languages
(Dec. 18th, 1544); warning all schoolmasters about the use of unlicensed
books in their schools, and giving a list of those only which are permitted
(July 31st, 1546). The edict of 1546 was followed by a long list of

prohibited books, among which are eleven editions of the Vulgate printed
by Protestant firms, six editions of the Bible and three of the New
Testament in Dutch, two editions of the Bible in French, and many others.
Lastly, an edict of April 29th, 1550, confirmed all the previous edicts
against heresy and its spread, and intimated that the Inquisitors would
proceed against heretics “notwithstanding any privileges to the contrary,
which are abrogated and annulled by this edict.” This was a clear threat that
the terrible Spanish Inquisition was to be established in the Netherlands,
and provoked such remonstrances that the edict was modified twice (Sept.
25th, Nov. 5th) before it was finally accepted as legal within the seventeen
provinces.
All these edicts were directed against the Lutheran or kindred teaching.
They had nothing to do with the Anabaptist movement, which called forth a
special and different set of edicts. It seems against all evidence to say that
the persecution of the Lutherans had almost ceased during the last years of
Charles’ rule in the Netherlands, and Philip II. could declare with almost
perfect truth that his edicts were only his father’s re-issued.
The continuous repetition and increasing severity of the edicts revealed not
merely that persecution did not hinder the spread of the Reformed faith, but
that the edicts themselves were found difficult to enforce. What Charles
would have done had he been able to govern the country himself it is
impossible to say. He became harder and more intolerant of differences in
matters of doctrine as years went on, and in his latest days is said to have
regretted that he had allowed Luther to leave Worms alive; and he might
have dealt with the Protestants of the seventeen provinces as his son
afterwards did. His aunt, Margaret of Austria, who was Regent till 1530,
had no desire to drive matters to an extremity; and his sister Mary, who
ruled from 1530 till the abdication of Charles in 1555, was suspected in
early life of being a Lutheran herself. She never openly joined the Lutheran
Church as did her sister the Queen of Denmark, but she confessed her
sympathies to Charles, and gave them as a reason for reluctance to
undertake the regency of the Netherlands. It may therefore be presumed that
the severe edicts were not enforced with undue stringency by either
Margaret of Austria or by the widowed Queen of Hungary. There is also
evidence to show that these proclamations denouncing and menacing the
unfortunate Protestants of the Netherlands were not looked on with much

favour by large sections of the population. Officials were dilatory,
magistrates were known to have warned suspected persons to escape before
the police came to arrest them; even to have given them facilities for escape
after sentence had been delivered. Passive resistance on the part of the
inferior authorities frequently interposed itself between the Emperor and the
execution of his bloodthirsty proclamations. Yet the number of Protestant
martyrs was large, and women as well as men suffered torture and death
rather than deny their faith.
The edicts against conventicles deterred neither preachers nor audience. The
earliest missioners were priests and monks who had become convinced of
the errors of Romanism. Later, preachers were trained in the south German
cities and in Geneva, that nursery of daring agents of the Reformed
propaganda. But if trained teachers were lacking, members of the
congregation took their place at the peril of their lives. Brandt relates how
numbers of people were accustomed to meet for service in a shipwright’s
yard at Antwerp to hear a monk who had been “proclaimed”:
“The teacher, by some chance or other, could not appear, and one of the
company named Nicolas, a person well versed in Scripture, thought it a
shame that such a congregation, hungering after the food of the Word,
should depart without a little spiritual nourishment; wherefore, climbing the
mast of a ship, he taught the people according to his capacity; and on that
account, and for the sake of the reward that was set upon the preacher, he
was seized by two butchers and delivered to the magistrates, who caused
him to be put into a sack and thrown into the river, where he was
drowned.”[240]

§ 3. The Anabaptists.

The severest persecutions, however, before the rule of Philip II., were
reserved for those people who are called the Anabaptists.[241] We find
several edicts directed against them solely. In February 1532 it was
forbidden to harbour Anabaptists, and a price of 12 guilders was offered to
informants. Later in the same year an edict was published which declared
“that all who had been rebaptized, were sorry for their fault, and, in token of
their repentance, had gone to confession, would be admitted to mercy for
that time only, provided they brought a certificate from their confessor

within twenty-four days of the date of the edict; those who continued
obdurate were to be treated with the utmost rigour of the laws” (Feb. 1533).
Anabaptists who had abjured were ordered to remain near their dwelling-
places for the space of a year, “unless those who were engaged in the
herring fishery” (June 1534). In 1535 the severest edict against the sect was
published. All who had “seduced or perverted any to this sect, or had
rebaptized them,” were to suffer death by fire; all who had suffered
themselves to be rebaptized, or who had harboured Anabaptists, and who
recanted, were to be favoured by being put to death by the sword; women
were “only to be buried alive.”[242]
To understand sympathetically that multiform movement which was called
in the sixteenth century Anabaptism, it is necessary to remember that it was
not created by the Reformation, although it certainly received an impetus
from the inspiration of the age. Its roots can be traced back for some
centuries, and its pedigree has at least two stems which are essentially
distinct, and were only occasionally combined. The one stem is the
successions of the Brethren, a mediæval, anti-clerical body of Christians
whose history is written only in the records of Inquisitors of the mediæval
Church, where they appear under a variety of names, but are universally
said to prize the Scriptures and to accept the Apostles’ Creed.[243] The other
existed in the continuous uprisings of the poor—peasants in rural districts
and the lower classes in the towns—against the rich, which were a feature
of the later Middle Ages.[244]
So far as the Netherlands are concerned, these popular outbreaks had been
much more frequent among the towns’ population than in the rural districts.
The city patriciate ordinarily controlled the magistracy; but when flagrant
cases of oppression arose, all the judicial, financial, and other functions of
government were sure to be swept out of their hands in an outburst of
popular fury. So much was this the case, that the real holders of power in
the towns in the Netherlands during the first half of the sixteenth century
were the artisans, strong in their trade organisations. They had long known
their power, and had been accustomed to exert it. The blood of a turbulent
ancestry ran in their veins—of men who could endure for a time, but who,
when roused by serious oppression, had been accustomed to defend
themselves, and to give stroke for stroke. It is only natural to find among
the artisans of the Flemish and Dutch towns a curious mingling of sublime

self-sacrifice for what they believed to be the truth, of the mystical
exaltation of the martyr occasionally breaking out in hysterical action, and
the habit of defending themselves against almost any odds.
So far as is known, the earliest Anabaptist martyrs were Jan Walen and two
others belonging to Waterlandt. They were done to death in a peculiarly
atrocious way at The Hague in 1527. Instead of being burnt alive, they were
chained to a stake at some distance from a huge fire, and were slowly
roasted to death. This frightful punishment seems to have been reserved for
the Anabaptist martyrs. It was repeated at Haarlem in 1532, when a woman
was drowned and her husband with two others was roasted alive. Some time
in 1530, Jan Volkertz founded an Anabaptist congregation in Amsterdam
which became so large as to attract the attention of the authorities. The head
of the police (schout) in the city was ordered to apprehend them. Volkertz
delivered himself up voluntarily. The greater part of the accused received
timely warning from the schout’s wife. Nine were taken by night in their
beds. These with their pastor were carried to The Hague and beheaded by
express order of the Emperor. He also commanded that their heads should
be sent to Amsterdam, where they were set on poles in a circle, the head of
Volkertz being in the centre. This ghastly spectacle was so placed that it
could be seen from the ships entering and leaving the harbour. All these
martyrs, and many others whose deaths are duly recorded, were followers
of Melchior Hoffman. Hoffman’s views were those of the “Brethren” of the
later Middle Ages, the Old Evangelicals as they were called. In a paper of
directions sent to Emden to assist in the organisation of an Anabaptist
congregation there, he says:

“God’s community knows no head but Christ. No other can be
endured, for it is a brother- and sisterhood. The teachers have none
who rule them spiritually but Christ. Teachers and ministers are not
lords. The pastors have no authority except to preach God’s Word and
punish sins. A bishop must be elected out of his community. Where a
pastor has thus been taken, and the guidance committed to him and to
his deacon, a community should provide properly for those who help
to build the Lord’s house. When teachers are thus found, there is no
fear that the communities will suffer spiritual hunger. A true preacher
would willingly see the whole community prophesy.”

But the persecution, with its peculiar atrocities, had been acting in its usual
way on the Anabaptists of the Netherlands. They had been tortured on the
rack, scourged, imprisoned in dungeons, roasted to death before slow fires,
and had seen their women drowned, buried alive, pressed into coffins too
small for their bodies till their ribs were broken, others stamped into them
by the feet of the executioners. It is to be wondered at that those who stood
firm sometimes gave way to hysterical excesses; that their leaders began to
preach another creed than that of passive resistance; that wild apocalyptic
visions were reported and believed?
Melchior Hoffman had been imprisoned in Strassburg in 1533, and a new
leader arose in the Netherlands—Jan Matthys, a baker of Haarlem. Under
his guidance an energetic propaganda was carried on in the Dutch towns,
and hundreds of converts were made. One hundred persons were baptized
in one day in February (1534); before the end of March it was reported that
two-thirds of the population in Monnikendam were Anabaptists; and a
similar state of matters existed in many of the larger Dutch towns.
Deventer, Zwolle, and Kampen were almost wholly Anabaptist. The
Government made great exertions to crush the movement. Detachments of
soldiers were divided into bands of fifteen or twenty, and patrolled the
environs of the cities, making midnight visitations, and haling men and
women to prison until the dungeons were overcrowded with captured
Anabaptists.
Attempts were made by the persecuted to leave the country for some more
hospitable place where they could worship God in peace in the way their
consciences directed them. East Friesland had once been a haven, but was
so no longer. Münster offered a refuge. Ships were chartered,—thirty of
them,—and the persecuted people proposed to sail round the north of
Friesland, land at the mouth of the Ems, and travel to Münster by land.[245]
The Emperor’s ships intercepted the little fleet, sank five of the vessels with
all the emigrants on board, and compelled the rest to return. The leaders
found on board were decapitated, and their heads stuck on poles to warn
others. Hundreds from the provinces of Guelderland and Holland attempted
the journey by land. They piled their bits of poor furniture and bundles of
clothes on waggons; some rode horses, most trudged on foot, the women
and children, let us hope, getting an occasional ride on the waggons.
Soldiers were sent to intercept them. The leaders were beheaded, the men

mostly imprisoned, and the women and children sent back to their towns
and villages.
Then, and not till they had exhausted every method of passive resistance,
the Anabaptists began to strike back. They wished to seize a town already
containing a large Anabaptist population, and hold it as a city of refuge.
Deventer, which was full of sympathisers, was their first aim. The plot
failed, and the burgomaster’s son Willem, one of the conspirators, was
seized, and with two companions beheaded in the market-place (Dec. 25th,
1534). Their next attempt was on Leyden. It was called a plot to burn the
town. The magistrates got word of it, and, by ordering the great town-clock
to be stopped, disconcerted the plotters. Fifteen men and five women were
seized; the men were decapitated, and the women drowned (Jan. 1535).
Next month (Feb. 28th, 1535), Jan van Geelen, leading a band of three
hundred refugees through Friesland, was overtaken by some troops of
soldiers. The little company entrenched themselves, fought bravely for
some days, until nearly all were killed. The survivors were almost all
captured and put to death, the men by the sword, and the women by
drowning. One hundred soldiers fell in the attack. A few months later (May
1535), an attempt was made to seize Amsterdam. It was headed by van
Geelen, the only survivor of the skirmish in Friesland. He and his
companions were able to get possession of the Stadthaus, and held it against
the town’s forces until cannon were brought to batter down their defences.
In the early days of the same year an incident occurred which shows how,
under the strain of persecution, an hysterical exaltation took possession of
some of these poor people. It is variously reported. According to Brandt,
seven men and five women having stript off their clothes, as a sign, they
said, that they spoke the naked truth, ran through the streets of Amsterdam,
crying Woe! Woe! Woe! The Wrath of God! They were apprehended, and
slaughtered in the usual way. The woman in whose house they had met was
hanged at her own door.
The insurrections were made the pretext for still fiercer persecutions. The
Anabaptists were hunted out, tortured and slain without any attempt being
made by the authorities to discriminate between those who had and those
who had not been sharers in any insurrectionary attempt. It is alleged that
over thirty thousand people were put to death in the Netherlands during the
reign of Charles V. Many of the victims had no connection with Anabaptism

whatsoever; they were quiet followers of Luther or of Calvin. The
authorities discriminated between them in their proclamations, but not in
the persecution.

§ 4. Philip of Spain and the Netherlands.

How long the Netherlands would have stood the continual drain of money
and the severity of the persecution which the foreign and religious policy of
Charles enforced upon them, it is impossible to say. The people of the
country were strongly attached to him, as he was to them. He had been born
and had grown from childhood to manhood among them. Their languages,
French and Flemish, were the only speech he could ever use with ease. He
had been ruler in the Netherlands before he became King of Spain, and long
before he was called to fill the imperial throne. When he resolved to act on
his long meditated scheme of abdicating in favour of his son Philip, it was
to the Netherlands that he came. Their nobles and people witnessed the
scene with hardly less emotion than that which showed itself in the faltering
speech of the Emperor.
The ceremony took place in the great Hall of the palace in Brussels (Oct.
25th, 1555), in presence of the delegates of the seventeen provinces. Mary,
the widowed Queen of Hungary, who had governed the land for twenty-five
years, witnessed the scene which was to end her rule. Philip, who was to
ruin the work of consolidation patiently planned and executed by his father
and his aunt, was present, summoned from his uncongenial task of eating
roast beef and drinking English ale in order to conciliate his new subjects
across the Channel, and from the embarrassing endearments of his elderly
spouse. The Emperor, aged by toil rather than by years, entered the Hall
leaning heavily on his favourite page and trusty counsellor, the youthful
William, Prince of Orange, who was to become the leader of the revolt
against Philip’s rule, and to create a new Protestant State, the United
Provinces.
The new lord of the Netherlands was then twenty-eight. In outward
appearance he was a German like his father, but in speech he was a
Spaniard. He had none of his father’s external geniality, and could never
stoop to win men to his ends. But Philip II. was much liker Charles V. than
many historians seem willing to admit. Both had the same slow, patient

industry—but in the son it was slower; the same cynical distrust of all men;
the same belief in the divine selection of the head of the House of Hapsburg
to guide all things in State and Church irrespective of Popes or Kings—only
in the son it amounted to a sort of gloomy mystical assurance; the same
callousness to human suffering, and the same utter inability to comprehend
the force of strong religious conviction. Philip was an inferior edition of his
father, succeeding to his father’s ideas, pursuing the same policy, using the
same methods, but handicapped by the fact that he had not originated but
had inherited both, and with them the troubles brought in their train.
Philip II. spent the first four years of his reign in the Netherlands, and
during that short period of personal rule his policy had brought into being
all the more important sources of dissatisfaction which ended in the revolt.
Yet his policy was the same, and his methods were not different from those
of his father. In one respect at least Charles had never spared the
Netherlands. That country had to pay, as no other part of his vast
possessions was asked to do, the price of his foreign policy, and Charles had
wrung unexampled sums from his people.
When Philip summoned the States General (March 12th, 1556) and asked
them for a very large grant (Fl. 1,300,000), he was only following his
father’s example, and on that occasion was seeking money to liquidate the
deficit which his father had bequeathed. Was it that the people of the
Netherlands had resolved to end the practice of making them pay for a
foreign policy which had hitherto concerned them little, or was it because
they could not endure the young Spaniard who could not speak to them in
their own language? Would Charles have been refused as well as Philip?
Who can say?
When Philip obtained a Bull from Pope Paul IV. for creating a territorial
episcopate in the Netherlands, he was only carrying out the policy which his
father had sketched as early as 1522, and which but for the shortness of the
pontificate of Hadrian VI. would undoubtedly have been executed in 1524
without any popular opposition. Charles’ scheme contemplated six
bishoprics, Philip’s fourteen; that was the sole difference; and from the
ecclesiastical point of view Philip’s was probably the better. Why then the
bitter opposition to the change in 1557? Most historians seem to think that
had Charles been ruling, there would have been few murmurs. Is that so
certain? The people feared the institution of the bishoprics, because they

dreaded and hated an Inquisition which would override their local laws,
rights, and privileges; and Charles had been obliged to modify his “Placard”
of 1549 against heresy, because towns and districts protested so loudly
against it. During these early years Philip made no alterations on his
father’s proclamations against heresy. He contented himself with reissuing
the “Placard” of 1549 as that had been amended in 1550 after the popular
protests. The personality of Philip was no doubt objectionable to his
subjects in the Netherlands, but it cannot be certainly affirmed that had
Charles continued to reign there would have been no widespread revolt
against his financial, ecclesiastical, and religious policy. The Regent Mary
had been finding her task of ruling more and more difficult. A few weeks
before the abdication, when the Emperor wished his sister to continue in the
Regency, she wrote to him:

“I could not live among these people even as a private citizen, for it
would be impossible to do my duty towards God and my Prince. As to
governing them, I take God to witness that the task is so abhorrent to
me that I would rather earn my daily bread by labour than attempt it.”

In 1559 (Aug. 26th), Philip left the Netherlands never to return. He had
selected Margaret of Parma, his half-sister, the illegitimate daughter of
Charles V., for Regent. Margaret had been born and brought up in the
country; she knew the language, and she had been so long away from her
native land that she was not personally committed to any policy nor
acquainted with the leaders of any of the parties.
The power of the Regent, nominally extensive, was in reality limited by
secret instructions.[246] She was ordered to put in execution the edicts
against heresy without any modification; and she was directed to submit to
the advice given her by three Councils, a command which placed her under
the supervision of the three men selected by Philip to be the presidents of
these Councils. The Council of State was the most important, and was
entrusted with the management of the whole foreign and home
administration of the country. It consisted of the Bishop of Arras (Antoine
Perronet de Granvelle, afterwards Cardinal de Granvelle);[247] the Baron de
Barlaymont, who was President of the Council of Finance; Vigilius van
Aytta, a learned lawyer from Friesland, “a small brisk man, with long
yellow hair, glittering green eyes, fat round rosy cheeks, and flowing

beard,” who was President of the Privy Council, and controlled the
administration of law and justice; and two of the Netherland nobles,
Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Prince of Gavre, and William, Prince of
Orange. The two nobles were seldom consulted or even invited to be
present. The three Presidents were the Consulta, or secret body of
confidential advisers imposed by Philip upon his Regent, without whose
advice nothing was to be attempted. Of the three, the Bishop of Arras
(Cardinal de Granvelle) was the most important, and the government was
practically placed in his hands by his master. Behind the Consulta was
Philip II. himself, who in his business room in the Escurial at Madrid issued
his orders, repressing every tendency to treat the people with moderation
and humanity, thrusting aside all suggestions of wise tolerance, and
insisting that his own cold-blooded policy should be carried out in its most
objectionable details. It was not until the publication of de Granvelle’s State
Papers and Correspondence that it came to be known how much the Bishop
of Arras has been misjudged by history, how he remonstrated unavailingly
with his master, how he was forced to put into execution a sanguinary
policy of repression which was repugnant to himself, and how Philip
compelled him to bear the obloquy of his own misdeeds. The
correspondence also reveals the curiously minute information which Philip
must have privately received, for he was able to send to the Regent and the
Bishop the names, ages, personal appearance, occupations, residence of
numbers of obscure people whom he ordered to execution for their religious
opinions.[248] No rigour of persecution seemed able to prevent the spread of
the Reformation.[249]
The Government—Margaret and her Consulta—offended grievously not
merely the people, but the nobility of the Netherlands. The nobles saw their
services and positions treated as things of no consequence, and the people
witnessed with alarm that the local charters and privileges of the land—
charters and rights which Philip at his coronation had sworn to maintain—
were totally disregarded. Gradually all classes of the population were united
in a silent opposition. The Prince of Orange and Count Egmont became
almost insensibly the leaders.
They had been dissatisfied with their position on the Council of State; they
had no real share in the business; the correspondence was not submitted to
them, and they knew such details only as Granvelle chose to communicate

to them. Their first overt act was to resign the commissions they held in the
Spanish troops stationed in the country; their second, to write to the King
asking him to relieve them of their position on the Council of State, telling
him that matters of great importance were continually transacted without
their knowledge or concurrence, and that in the circumstances they could
not conscientiously continue to sustain the responsibilities of office.[250]
The opposition took their stand on three things, all of which hung together
—the presence of Spanish troops on the soil of the Netherlands, the
cruelties perpetrated in the execution of the Placards against heresy, and the
institution of the new bishoprics in accordance with the Bull of Pope Paul
IV., reaffirmed by Pius IV. in 1560 (Jan.). The common fighting ground for
the opposition to all the three was the invasion of the charters and privileges
of the various provinces which these measures necessarily involved, and the
consequent violation of the King’s coronation oath.
Philip had solemnly promised to withdraw the Spanish troops within three
or four months after he left the country. They had remained for fourteen,
and the whole land cried out against the pillage and rapine which
accompanied their presence. The people of Zeeland declared that they
would rather see the ocean submerge their country—that they would rather
perish, men, women, and children, in the waves—than endure longer the
outrages which these mercenaries inflicted upon them. They refused to
repair the Dykes. The presence of these troops had been early seen to be a
degradation to his country by William of Orange.[251] At the States General
held on the eve of Philip’s departure, he had urged the Assembly to make
the departure of the troops a condition of granting subsidies, and had roused
Philip’s wrath in consequence. He now voiced the cry of the whole country.
It was so strong that Granvelle sent many an urgent request to the King to
sanction their removal; and at length he and the Regent, without waiting for
orders, had the troops embarked for Madrid.
The rigorous repression of heresy compelled the Government to override
the charters of the several provinces. Many of these charters contained very
strong provisions, and the King had sworn to maintain them. The
constitution of Brabant, known as the joyeuse entrée (blyde inkomst),
provided that the clergy should not be given unusual powers; and that no
subject, nor even a foreign resident, could be prosecuted civilly or
criminally except in the ordinary courts of the land, where he could answer

and defend himself with the help of advocates. The charter of Holland
contained similar provisions. Both charters declared that if the Prince
transgressed these provisions the subjects were freed from their allegiance.
The inquisitorial courts violated the charters of those and of the other
provinces. The great objection taken to the increase of the episcopate,
according to the provisions of the Bulls of Paul IV. and of Pius IV., was that
it involved a still greater infringement of the chartered rights of the land.
For example, the Bulls provided that the bishops were to appoint nine
canons, who were to assist them in all inquisitorial cases, while at least one
of them was to be an Inquisitor charged with ferreting out and punishing
heresy. This was apparently their great charm for Philip II. He desired an
instrument to extirpate heretics. He knew that the Reformation was making
great progress in the Netherlands, especially in the great commercial cities.
“I would lose all my States and a hundred lives if I had them,” he wrote to
the Pope, “rather than be the lord of heretics.”
The opposition at first contented itself with protesting against the position
and rule of Granvelle, and with demanding his recall. Philip came to the
reluctant conclusion to dismiss his Minister, and did so with more than his
usual duplicity. The nobles returned to the Council, and the Regent affected
to take their advice. But they were soon to discover that the recall of the
obnoxious Minister did not make any change in the policy of Philip.
The Regent read them a letter from Philip ordering the publication and
enforcement of the Decrees of the Council of Trent in the Netherlands.[252]
The nobles protested vehemently on the ground that this would mean a still
further invasion of the privileges of the provinces. After long deliberation, it
was resolved to send Count Egmont to Madrid to lay the opinions of the
Council before the King. The debate was renewed on the instructions to be
given to the delegate. Those suggested by the President, Vigilius, were
colourless. Then William the Silent spoke out. His speech, a long one, full
of suppressed passionate sympathy with his persecuted fellow-countrymen,
made an extraordinary impression. It is thus summarised by Brandt:

That they ought to speak their minds freely; that there were such
commotions and revolutions on account of religion in all the
neighbouring countries, that it was impossible to maintain the present
régime, and think to suppress disturbances by means of Placards,

Inquisitions, and Bishops; that the King was mistaken if he proposed
to maintain the Decrees of the Council of Trent in these Provinces
which lay so near Germany, where all the Princes, Roman Catholics as
well as Protestants, have justly rejected them; that it would be better
that His Majesty should tolerate these things as other Princes were
obliged to do, and annul or else moderate the punishments proclaimed
in the Placards; that though he himself had resolved to adhere to the
Catholic religion, yet he could not approve that Princes should aim at
dominion over the souls of men, or deprive them of the freedom of
their faith and religion.[253]

The instructions given to Egmont were accordingly both full and plain-
spoken.
Count Egmont departed leisurely to Madrid, was well received by Philip,
and left thoroughly deceived, perhaps self-deceived, about the King’s
intentions. He had a rude awakening when the sealed letter he bore was
opened and read in the Council. It announced no real change in policy, and
in the matter of heresy showed that the King’s resolve was unaltered. A
despatch to the Regent (Nov. 5th, 1565) was still more unbending. Philip
would not enlarge the powers of the Council in the Netherlands; he
peremptorily refused to summon the States General; and he ordered the
immediate publication and enforcement of the Decrees of the Council of
Trent in every town and village in the seventeen provinces. True to the
policy of his house, the Decrees of Trent were to be proclaimed in his name,
not in that of the Pope. It was the beginning of the tragedy, as William of
Orange remarked.
The effect of the order was immediate and alarming. The Courts of Holland
and Brabant maintained that the Decrees infringed their charters, and
refused to permit their publication. Stadtholders and magistrates declared
that they would rather resign office than execute decrees which would
compel them to burn over sixty thousand of their fellow-countrymen. Trade
ceased; industries died out; a blight fell on the land. Pamphlets full of
passionate appeals to the people to put an end to the tyranny were
distributed and eagerly read. In one of them, which took the form of a letter
to the King, it was said:

“We are ready to die for the Gospel, but we read therein, ‘Render unto
Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are
God’s.’ We thank God that even our enemies are constrained to bear
witness to our piety and innocence, for it is a common saying: ‘He
does not swear, for he is a Protestant. He is not an immoral man, nor a
drunkard, for he belongs to the new sect’; yet we are subjected to
every kind of punishment that can be invented to torment us.”[254]

The year 1566 saw the origin of a new confederated opposition to Philip’s
mode of ruling the Netherlands. Francis Du Jon, a young Frenchman of
noble birth, belonging to Bourges, had studied for the ministry at Geneva,
and had been sent as a missioner to the Netherlands, where his learning and
eloquence had made a deep impression on young men of the upper classes.
His life was in constant peril, and he was compelled to flit secretly from the
house of one sympathiser to that of another. During the festivities which
accompanied the marriage of the young Alexander of Parma with Maria of
Portugal, he was concealed in the house of the Count of Culemburg in
Brussels. On the day of the wedding he preached and prayed with a small
company of young nobles, twenty in all. There and at other meetings held
afterwards it was resolved to form a confederacy of nobles, all of whom
agreed to bind themselves to support principles laid down in a carefully
drafted manifesto which went by the name of the Compromise. It was
mainly directed against the Inquisition, which it calls a tribunal opposed to
all laws, divine and human. Copies passed from hand to hand soon obtained
over two thousand signatures among the lower nobility and landed gentry.
Many substantial burghers also signed. The leading spirits in the
confederacy were Louis of Nassau, the younger brother of the Prince of
Orange, then a Lutheran; Philip de Marnix, lord of Sainte Aldegonde, a
Calvinist; and Henry Viscount Brederode, a Roman Catholic. The
confederates declared that they were loyal subjects; but pledged themselves
to protect each other if any of them were attacked.
The confederates met privately at Breda and Hoogstraten (March 1566),
and resolved to present a petition to the Regent asking that the King should
be recommended to abolish the Placards and the Inquisition, and that the
Regent should suspend their operation until the King’s wishes were known;
also that the States General should be assembled to consider other
ordinances dangerous to the country. The Regent had called an assembly of

the Notables for March 28th, and it was resolved to present the petition
then. The confederation and its Compromise were rather dreaded by the
great nobles who had been the leaders of the constitutional opposition, and
there was some debate about the presentation of the Request. The Baron de
Barlaymont went so far as to recommend a massacre of the petitioners in
the audience hall; but wiser counsels prevailed. The confederates met and
marshalled themselves,—two hundred young nobles,—and marched
through the streets to the Palace, amid the acclamations of the populace, to
present the Request.[255] The Regent was somewhat dismayed by the
imposing demonstration, but Barlaymont reassured her with the famous
words: “Madame, is your Highness afraid of these beggars (ces gueux)?”
The deputation was dismissed with fair words, and the promise that
although the Regent had no power to suspend the Placards or the
Inquisition, there would be some moderation used until the King’s pleasure
was known.
Before leaving Brussels, three hundred of the confederates met in the house
of the Count of Culemburg to celebrate their league at a banquet. The
Viscount de Brederode presided, and during the feast he recalled to their
memories the words of Barlaymont: “They call us beggars,” he said; “we
accept the name. We pledge ourselves to resist the Inquisition, and keep true
to the King and the beggar’s wallet.” He then produced the leathern sack of
the wandering beggars, strapped it round his shoulder, and drank prosperity
to the cause from a beggar’s wooden bowl. The name and the emblem were
adopted with enthusiasm, and spread far beyond the circle of the
confederacy.[256] Everywhere burghers, lawyers, peasants as well as nobles
appeared wearing the beggar’s sack. Medals, made first of wax set in a
wooden cup, then of gold and silver, were adopted by the confederated
nobles. On the one side was the effigies of the King, and on the obverse two
hands clasped and the beggar’s sack with the motto, Fidelles au Roi jusques
à porter la besace (beggar’s sack).
All these things were faithfully reported by the Regent to Philip, and she
besought him either to permit her to moderate the Placards and the
Inquisition, or to come to the Netherlands himself. He answered, promising
to come, and permitted her some discretion in the matter of repression of
heresy.

Meanwhile the people were greatly encouraged by the success, or
appearance of success, attending the efforts of the confederates. Refugees
returned from France, Germany, and Switzerland. Missioners of the
Reformed faith came in great numbers. Field-preachings were held all over
the country. The men came armed, planted sentinels, placed their women
and children within the square, and thus listened to the services conducted
by the excommunicated ministers. They heard the Scriptures read and
prayers poured forth in their own tongue. They sang hymns and psalms in
French, Flemish, and Dutch. The crowds were so large, the sentinels so
wary, the men so well armed, that the soldiers dared not attempt to disperse
them. At first the meetings were held at night in woods and desolate places,
but immunity created boldness.

“On July 23rd (1566) the Reformed rendezvoused in great numbers in
a large meadow not far from Ghent. There they formed a sort of camp,
fortifying themselves with their waggons, and setting sentinels at all
the roads. Some brought pikes, some hatchets, and others guns. In
front of them were pedlars with prohibited books, which they sold to
such as came. They planted several along the road whose business it
was to invite people to come to the preaching and to show them the
way. They made a kind of pulpit of planks, and set it upon a waggon,
from which the minister preached. When the sermon was ended, all the
congregation sang several psalms. They also drew water out of a well
or brook near them, and a child was baptized. Two days were spent
there, and then they adjourned to Deinsen, then to Ekelo near Bruges,
and so through all West Flanders.”[257]

Growing bolder still, the Reformed met in the environs and suburbs of the
great towns. Bands of men marched through the streets singing Psalms,
either the French versions of Clement Marot or Bèze or the Dutch one of
Peter Dathenus. It was in vain that the Regent issued a new Placard against
the preachers and the conventicles. It remained a dead letter. In Antwerp,
bands of the Reformed, armed, crowded to the preachings in defiance of the
magistrates, who were afraid of fighting in the streets. In the emergency the
Regent appealed to William of Orange, and he with difficulty appeased the
tumults and arranged a compromise. The Calvinists agreed to disarm on the

condition that they were allowed the free exercise of their worship in the
suburbs although not within the towns.[258]
The confederates were so encouraged with their successes that they thought
of attempting more. A great conference was held at St. Trond in the
principality of Liège (July 1566), attended by nearly two thousand
members. The leader was Louis of Nassau. They resolved on another
deputation to the Regent, and twelve of their number were selected to
present their demands. These “Twelve Apostles,” as the courtiers
contemptuously termed them, declared that the persecution had not been
mitigated as promised, and not obscurely threatened that if some remedy
were not found they might be forced to invoke foreign assistance. The
threat enraged the Regent; but she was helpless; she could only urge that
she had already made representations to the King, and had sent two
members of Council to inform the King about the condition of the country.
It seemed as if some impression had been made on Philip. The Regent
received a despatch (July 31st, 1566) saying that he was prepared to
withdraw the papal Inquisition from the Netherlands, and that he would
grant what toleration was consistent with the maintenance of the Catholic
religion; only he would in no way consent to a summoning of the States
General.
There was great triumphing in the Netherlands at this news. Perhaps every
one but the Prince of Orange was more or less deceived by Philip’s
duplicity. It is only since the archives of Simancas have yielded their secrets
that its depth has been known. They reveal that on Aug. 9th he executed a
deed in which he declared that the promise of pardon had been won from
him by force, and that he did not mean to keep it, and that on Aug. 12th he
wrote to the Pope that his declaration to withdraw the Inquisition was a
mere blind. William only knew that the King was levying troops, and that
he was blaming the great nobles of the Netherlands for the check inflicted
upon him by the confederates.
Long before Philip’s real intentions were unmasked, a series of iconoclastic
attacks not only gave the King the pretext he needed, but did more harm to
the cause of the Reformation in the Low Countries than all the persecutions
under Charles V. and his son. The origin of these tumultuous proceedings is
obscure. According to Brandt, who collects information from all sides:

“Some few of the vilest of the mob ... were those who began the dance,
being hallooed on by nobody knows whom. Their arms were staves,
hatchets, hammers, ladders, ropes, and other tools more proper to
demolish than to fight with; some few were provided with guns and
swords. At first they attacked the crosses and the images that had been
erected on the great roads in the country; next, those in the villages;
and, lastly, those in the towns and cities. All the chapels, churches, and
convents which they found shut they forced open, breaking, tearing,
and destroying all the images, pictures, shrines and other consecrated
things they met with; nay, some did not scruple to lay their hands upon
libraries, books, writings, monuments, and even on the dead bodies in
churches and churchyards.”[259]

According to almost all accounts, the epidemic, for the madness resembled
a disease, first appeared at St. Omer (Aug. 14th, 1566), then at Ypres, and
extended rapidly to other towns. It came to a height at Antwerp (16th and
17th Aug. 1566), when the mob sacked the great cathedral and destroyed
some of its richest treasures.[260] An eye-witness declared that the rioters in
the cathedral did not number more than one hundred men, women, and
boys, drawn from the dregs of the population, and that the attacks on the
other churches were made by small parties of ten or twelve persons.
These outrages had a disastrous effect on the Reformation movement in the
Netherlands, both immediately and in the future. They at once exasperated
the more liberal-minded Roman Catholics and enraged the Regent: they
began that gradual cleavage which ended in the separation of the Protestant
North from the Romanist South. The Regent felt herself justified in
practically withdrawing all the privileges she had accorded to the
Reformed, and in raising German and Walloon troops to overawe the
Protestants. The presence of these troops irritated some of the Calvinist
nobles, and John de Marnix, elder brother of Sainte Aldegonde, attempted
to seize the Island of Walcheren in order to hold it as a city of refuge for his
persecuted brethren. He was unsuccessful; a fight took place not far from
Antwerp itself, in which de Marnix was routed and slain (March 13th,
1567).

§ 5. William of Orange.

Meanwhile William of Orange had come to the conclusion that Philip was
meditating the suppression of the rights and liberties of the Low Countries
by Spanish troops, and was convinced that the great nobles who had
hitherto headed the constitutional opposition would be the first to be
attacked. He had conferences with Egmont and Hoorn at Dendermonde
(Oct. 3rd, 1566), and at Willebroek (April 2nd, 1567), and endeavoured to
persuade them that the only course open to them was to resist by force of
arms. His arguments were unavailing, and William sadly determined that he
must leave the country and retire to his German estates.
His forebodings were only too correct. Philip had resolved to send the Duke
of Alva to subdue the Netherlands. A force of nine thousand veteran
Spanish infantry with thirteen hundred Italian cavalry had been collected
from the garrisons of Lombardy and Naples, and Alva began a long,
difficult march over the Mt. Cenis and through Franche-Comté, Lorraine,
and Luxemburg. William had escaped just in time. When the Duke arrived
in Brussels and presented his credentials to the Council of State, it was seen
that the King had bestowed on him such extensive powers that Margaret
remained Regent in name only. One of his earliest acts was to get
possession of the persons of Counts Egmont and Hoorn, with their private
secretaries, and to imprison Antony van Straelen, Burgomaster of Antwerp,
and a confidential friend of the Prince of Orange. Many other arrests were
made; and Alva, having caught his victims, invented an instrument to help
him to dispose of them.
By the mere fiat of his will he created a judicial chamber, whose decisions
were to override those of any other court of law in the Netherlands, and
which was to be responsible to none, not even to the Council of State. It
was called the Council of Tumults, but is better known by its popular name,
The Bloody Tribunal. It consisted of twelve members, among whom were
Barlaymont and a few of the most violent Romanists of the Netherlands;
but only two, Juan de Vargas and del Rio, both Spaniards, were permitted to
vote and influence the decisions. Del Rio was a nonentity; but de Vargas
was a very stern reality—a man of infamous life, equally notorious for the
delight he took in slaughtering his fellow-men and the facility with which
he murdered the Latin language! He brought the whole population of the
Netherlands within the grip of the public executioner by his indictment:
Hæretici fraxerunt templa, boni nihil faxerunt contra; ergo debent omnes

patibulure: by which he meant, The heretics have broken open churches,
the orthodox have done nothing to hinder them; therefore they ought all of
them to be hanged together. Alva reserved all final decisions for his own
judgment, in order that the work might be thoroughly done. He wrote to the
King, “Men of law only condemn for crimes that are proved, whereas your
Majesty knows that affairs of State are governed by very different rules
from the laws which they have here.”
At its earlier sittings this terrible tribunal defined the crime of treason, and
stated that its punishment was death. The definition extended to eighteen
articles, and declared it to be treason—to have presented or signed any
petition against the new bishoprics, the Inquisition, or the Placards; to have
tolerated public preaching under any circumstances; to have omitted to
resist iconoclasm, or field-preaching, or the presentation of the Request; to
have asserted that the King had not the right to suspend the charters of the
provinces; or to maintain that the Council of Tumults had not a right to
override all the laws and privileges of the Netherlands. All these things
were treason, and all of them were capital offences. Proof was not required;
all that was needed was reasonable suspicion, or rather what the Duke of
Alva believed to be so. The Council soon got to work. It sent
commissioners through every part of the land—towns, villages, districts—
to search for any who might be suspected of having committed any act
which could be included within their definition of treason. Informers were
invited, were bribed, to come forward; and soon shoals of denunciations
and evidence flowed in to them. The accused were brought before the
Council, tried (if the procedure could be called a trial), and condemned in
batches. The records speak of ninety-five, eighty-four, forty-six, thirty-five
at a time. Alva wrote to Philip that no fewer than fifteen hundred had been
taken in their beds early on Ash-Wednesday morning, and later he
announces another batch of eight hundred. In each case he adds, “I have
ordered all of them to be executed.” In view of these records, the language
of a contemporary chronicler does not appeared exaggerated:

“The gallows, the wheel, stakes, trees along the highways, were laden
with carcasses or limbs of those who had been hanged, beheaded, or
roasted; so that the air which God made for the respiration of the
living, was now become the common grave or habitation of the dead.
Every day produced fresh objects of pity and of mourning, and the

noise of the bloody passing-bell was continually heard, which by the
martyrdom of this man’s cousin, and the other’s brother or friend, rang
dismal peals in the hearts of the survivors.”[261]

Whole families left their dwellings to shelter themselves in the woods, and,
goaded by their misery, pillaged and plundered. The priests had been active
as informers, and these Wild-Beggars, as they were called, “made
excursions on them, serving themselves of the darkest nights for revenge
and robbery, punishing them not only by despoiling them of their goods, but
by disfiguring their faces, cutting off ears and noses.” The country was in a
state of anarchy.
Margaret, Duchess of Parma, the nominal Regent of the Netherlands, had
found her position intolerable since the arrival of the Duke of Alva, and was
permitted by Philip to resign (Oct. 6th, 1567). Alva henceforth was
untrammelled by even nominal restraint. A process was begun against the
Counts Egmont and Hoorn, and William of Orange was proclaimed an
outlaw (Jan. 24th, 1568) unless he submitted himself for trial before the
Council of Tumults. Some days afterwards, his eldest son, a boy of fifteen
and a student in the University of Louvain, was kidnapped and carried off to
Spain.[262]
William replied in his famous Justification of the Prince of Orange against
his Calumniators, in which he declared that he, a citizen of Brabant, a
Knight of the Golden Fleece, a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, one of
the sovereign Princes of Europe (in virtue of the principality of Orange),
could not be summoned before an incompetent tribunal. He reviewed the
events in the Netherlands since the accession of Philip II., and spoke plainly
against the misgovernment caused, he said diplomatically, by the evil
counsels of the King’s advisers. The Justification was published in several
languages, and was not merely an act of defiance to Philip, but a plea made
on behalf of his country to the whole of civilised Europe.
The earlier months of 1568 had been spent by the Prince of Orange in
military preparations for the relief of his countrymen, and in the spring his
army was ready. The campaign was a failure. Hoogstraten was defeated.
Louis of Nassau had a temporary success at Heiliger-Lee (May 23rd, 1568),
only to be routed at Jemmingen (July 21st, 1568). After William had issued
a pathetic but unavailing manifesto to Protestant Europe, a second

expedition was sent forth only to meet defeat. The cause of the Netherlands
seemed hopeless.
But Alva was beginning to find himself in difficulties. On the news of the
repulse of his troops at Heiliger-Lee he had hastily beheaded the Counts
Egmont and Hoorn. Instead of striking terror into the hearts of the
Netherlanders, the execution roused them to an undying hatred of the
Spaniard. He was now troubled by lack of money to pay his troops. He had
promised Philip to make gold flow from the Low Countries to Spain; but
his rule had destroyed the commerce and manufactures of the country, the
source of its wealth. He was almost dependent on subsidies from Spain.
Elizabeth of England had been assisting her fellow Protestants in the way
she liked best, by seizing Spanish treasure ships; and Alva was reduced to
find the money he needed within the Netherlands.
It was then that he proposed to the States General, summoned to meet him
(March 20th, 1569), his notorious scheme of taxation, which finally ruined
him—a tax of one per cent. (the “hundredth penny”) to be levied once for
all on all property; a tax of five per cent. (the “twentieth penny”) to be
levied at every sale or transfer of landed property: and a tax of ten per cent.
(the “tenth penny”) on all articles of commerce each time they were sold.
This scheme of taxation would have completely ruined a commercial and
manufacturing country. It met with universal resistance. Provinces, towns,
magistrates, guilds, the bishops and the clergy—everyone protested against
the taxation. Even Philip’s Council at Madrid saw the impossibility of
exacting such taxes from a country. Alva swore that he would have his own
way. The town and district of Utrecht had been the first to protest. Alva
quartered the regiment of Lombardy upon them; but not even the licence
and brutality of the soldiers could force the wretched people to pay. Alva
proclaimed the whole of the inhabitants to be guilty of high treason; he took
from them all their charters and privileges; he declared their whole property
confiscated to the King. But these were the acts of a furious madman, and
were unavailing. He then postponed the collection of the hundredth and of
the tenth pennies; but the need of money forced him on, and he gave
definite orders for the collection of the “tenth” and the “twentieth pennies.”
The trade and manufactures of the country came to a sudden standstill, and
Alva at last knew that he was beaten. He had to be satisfied with a payment
of two millions of florins for two years.

The real fighting force among the Reformed Netherlanders was to be found,
not among the landsmen, but in the sailors and fishermen. It is said that
Admiral Coligny was the first to point this out to the Prince of Orange. He
acted upon the advice, and in 1569 he had given letters of marque to some
eighteen small vessels to cruise in the narrow seas and attack the Spaniards.
At first they were little better than pirates,—men of various nationalities
united by a fierce hatred of Spaniards and Papists, feared by friends and
foes alike. William attempted, at first somewhat unsuccessfully, to reduce
them to discipline and order, by issuing with his letters of marque orders
limiting their indiscriminate pillage, insisting upon the maintenance of
religious services on board, and declaring that one-third of the booty was to
be given to himself for the common good of the country. In their earlier
days they were allowed to refit and sell their plunder in English ports, but
these were closed to them on strong remonstrances from the Court of Spain.
It was almost by accident that they seized and held (April 1st, 1572) Brill or
Brielle, a strongly fortified town on Voorn, which was then an island at the
mouth of the Maas, some twenty miles west or seaward from Rotterdam.
The inhabitants were forced to take an oath of allegiance to William as
Stadtholder under the King, and the flag of what was afterwards to become
the United Provinces was hoisted on land for the first time. It was not
William, but his brother Louis of Nassau, who was the first to see the future
possibilities in this act. He urged the seizure of Flushing or Vlissingen, the
chief stronghold in Zeeland, situated on an island at the mouth of the Honte
or western Scheldt, and commanding the entrance to Antwerp. The citizens
rose in revolt against the Spanish garrison; the Sea-Beggars, as they were
called, hurried to assist them; the town was taken, and the Spanish
commander, Pachecho, was captured and hanged. This gave the seamen
possession of the whole island of Walcheren save the fortified town of
Middleburg. Delfshaven and Schiedam were seized. The news swept
through Holland, Zeeland, Guelderland, Utrecht, and Friesland, and town
after town declared for William of Orange the Stadtholder. The leaders were
marvellously encouraged to renewed exertions.[263] Proclamations in the
name of the new ruler were scattered broadcast through the country, and the
people were fired by a song said to be written by Sainte Aldegonde,
Wilhelmus van Nassouwe, which is still the national hymn of Holland. The
Prince of Orange thought he might venture on another invasion, and was
already near Brussels when the news of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew

reached him. His plans had been based on assistance from France, urged by
Coligny and promised by Charles IX. “What a sledge-hammer blow (coup
de massue) that has been,” he wrote to his brother; “my only hope was from
France.”[264] Mons, which Louis had seized in the south with his French
troops, had to be abandoned; and William, after some vain efforts, had to
disband his troops.
Then Alva came out from Brussels to wreak a fearful vengeance on Mons,
Mechlin, Tergoes, Naarden, Haarlem, and Zutphen. The terms of the
capitulation of Mons were violated. Mechlin was plundered and set on fire
by the Spanish troops. The Spanish commander sent against Zutphen had
orders to burn every house, and to slay men, women, and children. Haarlem
was invested, resisted desperately, and then capitulated on promise of
lenient treatment. When the Spaniards entered they butchered in cold blood
all the Dutch soldiers and some hundreds of the citizens; and, tying the
bodies two and two together, they cast them into the Haarlem lake. It
seemed as if the Papists had determined to exterminate the Protestants when
they found that they could not convert them.
Some towns, however, held out. Don Frederick, the son of Alva and the
butcher of Haarlem, was beaten back from the little town of Alkmaar. The
Sea-Beggars met the Spanish fleet sent to crush them, sank or scattered the
ships, and took the Admiral prisoner. The nation of fishermen and
shopkeepers, once the scorn of Spain and of Europe for their patient
endurance of indignities, were seen at last to be a race of heroes, determined
never again to endure the yoke of the Spaniard. Alva had soon to face a
soldiery mutinous for want of pay, and to see all his sea approaches in the
hands of Dutch sailors, whom the strongest fleets of Spain could not
subdue. The iron pitiless man at last acknowledged that he was beaten, and
demanded his recall. He left Brussels on Dec. 18th, 1573, and did not again
see the land he had deluged with blood during a space of six years. Like all
tyrants, he had great faith in his system, even when it had broken in his
hand. Had he been a little more severe, added a few more drops to the sea
of blood he had spilled, all would have gone well. The only advice he could
give to his successor was, to burn down every town he could not garrison
with Spanish troops.
The new Spanish Regent was Don Louis Requesens-y-Zuniga, a member of
the higher nobility of Spain, and a Grand Commander of the Knights of

Malta. He was high-minded, and of a generous disposition. Had he been
sent to the Netherlands ten years sooner, and allowed to act with a free
hand, the history of the Netherlands might have been different. His earlier
efforts at government were marked by attempts to negotiate, and he was at
pains to give Philip his reasons for his conduct.

“Before my arrival,” he wrote, “I could not comprehend how the rebels
contrived to maintain fleets so considerable, while your Majesty could
not maintain one. Now I see that men who are fighting for their lives,
their families, their property, and their false religion, in short, for their
own cause, are content if they receive only rations without pay.”

He immediately reversed the policy of Alva: he repealed the hated taxes;
dissolved the Council of Blood, and published a general amnesty. But he
could not come to terms with the “rebels.” William of Orange refused all
negotiation which was not based on three preliminary conditions—freedom
of conscience, and liberty to preach the Gospel according to the Word of
God; the restoration of all the ancient charters; and the withdrawal of all
Spaniards from all posts military and civil. He would accept no truce nor
amnesty without these. “We have heard too often,” he said, “the words
Agreed and Eternal. If I have your word for it, who will guarantee that the
King will not deny it, and be absolved for his breach of faith by the Pope?”
Requesens, hating the necessity, had to carry on the struggle which the
policy of his King and of the Regents who preceded him had provoked.
The fortune of war seemed to be unchanged. The patriots were always
victorious at sea and tenacious in desperate defence of their fortified towns
when they were besieged, but they went down before the veteran Spanish
infantry in almost every battle fought on land. In the beginning of 1574 two
fortresses were invested. The patriots were besieging Middleburg, and the
Spaniards had invested Leyden. The Sea-Beggars routed the Spanish fleet
in a bloody fight in the mouth of the Scheldt, and Middleburg had to
surrender. Leyden had two months’ respite owing to a mutiny among the
Spanish soldiers, but the citizens neglected the opportunity thus given them
to revictual their town. It was again invested (May 26th), and hardly
pressed. Louis of Nassau, leading an army to its assistance, was totally
routed at Mookerheide, and he and his younger brother Henry were among
the slain. The fate of Leyden seemed to be sealed, when William suggested