Volume 1 / Book 1 — CHAPTER XII. (continued 2)

The rein, and not the spur, needed.

Marriages and baptisms at court, "after the fashion of Geneva."

"Would that our friends might restrain themselves at least for two months!" was the ejaculation of Beza, in view of the natural impatience exhibited on all sides. "I fear our own party more than I do our adversaries."[1235] The rein was needed, not the spur. When, instead of two hundred persons, the Parisian assemblies of Huguenots often consisted of six thousand, a fanatical populace, accustomed for a whole generation to see the very suspicion of Lutheranism expiated in the flames of the Place de Grève or of the Halles, could ill brook the sight of such open gatherings for the reformed worship. How much greater the popular indignation when it became known that Chancellor L'Hospital had authorized two places for public worship according to the rites of the reformed churches, in the neighborhood of the Gate of St. Antoine and the Gate of St. Marceau! Added to these palpable proofs of the court's complicity with the heretics, was the no less scandalous fact that marriages and baptisms, celebrated "after the fashion of Geneva," were of frequent occurrence; that the nuptials of young De Rohan, cousin of Antoine of Navarre, and Mademoiselle de Brabançon, niece of the Duchess d'Étampes, had been performed on St. Michael's Day, and in the presence of Condé and the Queen of Navarre, by Theodore Beza himself; and that in a masquerade in the royal palace Charles the Ninth had worn a cap which bore an unmistakable resemblance to a bishop's mitre![1236]

Tanquerel's seditious declaration.

While legate and nuncio labored to put an end to these hateful manifestations by personal solicitation addressed to Catharine, to Cardinal Châtillon, and others,[1237] the priests and monks were no less active in stirring up the passions of the people to open resistance. In the scholastic halls of the Collége de Harecourt, one Tanquerel, a doctor of the Sorbonne, enunciated the dangerous maxim that "the Pope can depose heretical kings and emperors." At this menacing declaration, which, under a king in his minority and a regency divided in its sentiments on religious questions, was much more than a theoretical abstraction, the government took alarm. The Parliament of Paris investigated the offence, and the doctrine of Tanquerel was severely condemned. Tanquerel himself having fled from the city to avoid the consequences of his rashness, the Dean of the Sorbonne was required, by order of the supreme court, to utter in his name a solemn recantation in the presence of the assembled theologians and of a committee of parliament; and two theologians were deputed to St. Germain to beg the king's forgiveness.[1238]

Jean de Hans.

The preachers were not behind the doctors in the use of seditious language. They attacked the government and its entire policy; and one of their number—Jean de Hans—while delivering Advent discourses in the church of St. Barthélemi, in the very neighborhood of the palace, so distinguished himself for the extravagance of his denunciations, that he was arrested and carried off to the court at St. Germain. Yet such was his well-known popularity with the Parisians, that it was found necessary to effect his capture by a troop of forty armed men; and the powerful intercession made in his behalf induced the government to forget his disrespectful language respecting the princes, and to release him after barely a week's imprisonment.[1239]

Philip threatens to interfere in French affairs.

"A true defender of the faith."

Courteville's mission to Flanders.

Unfortunately, Tanquerel's treasonable thesis and Hans's excited declamation were not mere harmless speculations which might never be of any practical importance to the state. The King of Spain had taken the pains to inform the queen mother that he had fully made up his mind to interfere in the affairs of France, and to enforce Catholic supremacy at the point of the sword. She might accept or decline the offers of the self-appointed champion of orthodoxy; but, if she declined, he was resolved none the less to afford his succor to any true friend of the Church that chose to request it. Timid and irresolute Catharine, who desired to steer clear of the Scylla of Spanish intervention quite as much as of the Charybdis of Huguenot supremacy, trembled for the security of her unballasted bark. But the watchful old man who sat on St. Peter's reputed seat was thrown into a paroxysm of delight. When the Ambassador Vargas handed him a copy of the message his master had sent to St. Germain, Pope Pius paused a moment, after he had read the undisguised threat, then burst out with a flood of benedictions on the head of the Spanish king. "There," he cried, "is a truly Catholic prince, there a true defender of the faith! I expected no less of him."[1240] And Philip intended to carry his menaces into effect. On the twenty-fifth of October his secretary, Courteville, left Madrid, ostensibly on a visit to his infirm father in Flanders, but in reality intrusted with a very important commission, which, in an age when it was no uncommon thing for a messenger to be waylaid and robbed of his despatches, could scarcely be otherwise discharged. He was to make diligent inquiries of Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, as to the actual condition of the provinces, and the material support they could give the undertaking upon which Philip has set his heart. While passing through Paris he was to confide his dangerous secret to the Ambassador Chantonnay, and instruct him to support any of the Roman Catholic nobles that might show a disposition to rise,[1241] or to instigate them to action by the promise of Philip's support. Neither Margaret nor Chantonnay, however, could fulfil the monarch's desires. The former thought that Philip had thrown away the golden opportunity by failing to interfere while the question of Catharine's and Navarre's claims to the administration was in dispute, and when the number of sectaries was much smaller than at present; and by the time Courteville reached Poissy, where Chantonnay was stopping, the assembled nobles had dispersed to their homes, and the Guises were practically farther from Paris than from Brussels. So the execution of Philip's plan, both agreed, must be deferred for some time.[1242]

The ill-starred Medici family.

The Venetian envoy's lugubrious account of France.

It could not be denied that the situation was critical in the extreme. Long-headed diplomatists of the conservative school shook their heads ominously. They hinted that there might be only too much truth in the current Catholic saying that the Medici family was destined to be fatal to Christendom. Under Leo the Tenth Germany was lost to the papacy, under Clement the Eighth England had apostatized, and now under Pius the Fourth, a third Pope of the same ill-starred race, France was on the brink of ruin. The king was a boy, without experience and without authority, the council full of discord, the supreme power in the hands of the queen, who, though sagacious, was yet only a woman, and both timid and irresolute. The King of Navarre, while noble and gracious, was a prince of little constancy and limited practice in government. The people were in disorder and manifest division. Everywhere there were seditious and insolent men, who, under the pretext of religion, had disturbed the general peace, overturned customs and discipline, and put in doubt the royal authority and the safety of all. Oh, that Philip the Second had the courage of his father, or that Charles the Fifth had had his son's glorious opportunity—then would France be France no longer![1243] For just so certainly as the Spanish king was looked upon with suspicion by the rulers, was he longed for by all that hated the present state of things, and, most of all, by the prelates and the rest of the Catholics, who knew not in what other quarter to look for salvation.[1244]

Romish complaints of Huguenot boldness.

It was not possible that peace should long be maintained under such circumstances. It could not be but that the Huguenots, conscious of their growing numbers, confident of the near approach of the day when their rights were to be formally recognized, and impatient of the fetters with which their enemies still attempted to embarrass their progress, would assert their rights from day to day with increasing boldness. The priests and the rabble, on the other hand, regarded this new courage with suspicion, and interpreted every action as springing from insufferable insolence. They were on the watch to detect fresh examples of Huguenot audacity. They complained of the numbers that flocked to hear the reformed preachers, of the arms which some carried for self-defence—a precaution not very astonishing in view of the excited feelings of the Parisians and the frequent outbursts of their fury, and still less extraordinary on the part of the "noblesse," who were accustomed to wear a sword at all times. They went so far as to assert that the Huguenot multitude usurped the entire pavement, and were become so overbearing that they were ready to pick a quarrel with any one that presumed "to look at them." A peaceable Catholic must needs, to avoid abuse and hard blows, show more skill in getting out of their way than he would in shunning a mad dog. The streets resounded with their profane psalm-singing, and ill fared it with the unlucky wight that ventured to remonstrate, or dared to find fault with their provoking use of meat on the prohibited days. He was likely to have a broken head for his pains, or be shut up in prison by judges who sympathized with the "new doctrines."[1245] The court, however, more correctly ascribing the disturbances that occurred on such occasions to the attacks made upon the Protestants by their opponents, detached the "chevalier du guet" and his archers to attend the meetings and to prevent the disturbance of the worshippers on their way to and from the places assigned for the Protestant services in the suburbs.

The "tumult of Saint Médard."

At length, on Saturday, the twenty-seventh of December, a serious commotion took place. One of the two spots where Catharine, at the chancellor's suggestion, had permitted the Huguenots of the capital to meet for worship, was a spacious building on the southern side of the Seine, outside the walls and not far from the gate of St. Marceau. It bore the enigmatical designation of "Le Patriarche," derived—so antiquarians alleged—from the circumstance that it had been built long before by a patriarch of Alexandria expelled from his see by the Moslems.[1246] Here a congregation of several thousand persons[1247] had assembled in the afternoon. The introductory services over, the pastor, Jean Malot, had been preaching for a quarter of an hour, when his sermon was noisily interrupted. Separated from the "Patriarche" by a narrow lane stood the parish church of Saint Médard. Under the pretext of summoning the people to vespers, the priests had ordered all the bells in the tower to be rung violently, and hoped by the din to put an end to the heretical worship in the vicinity. Finding it impossible to make himself heard, the minister endeavored to restrain his excited audience, and after the singing of a psalm resumed his discourse. It was all in vain: St. Médard's bells pealed out the tocsin, and the sound of the discharge of fire-arms, and the crash of stones hurled from the belfry, increased the confusion. Meanwhile two Protestants had quietly gone over to the side door of the church, to request an abatement of the interruption. Their civil request was answered with violence. One of the men barely escaped with his life; the other, a deacon of the church, was killed on the spot. Five or six royal archers, commanded by the provost, Rouge-Oreille, next summoned the party within the church to desist, but met with no better success. At length the people, now congregated around the entrance, and subjected to a storm of missiles from the windows and the tower, forced open the doors and entered the church. Here they discovered the corpse of their murdered brother. The priests and sacristans, though armed with swords and clubs, were soon driven to take refuge in the belfry. In the struggle the ecclesiastics themselves became iconoclasts, and, when their supply of less sacred implements ran low, broke in pieces the images of saints, and rained the fragments upon the Huguenot crowd. Finally a threat to set fire to the belfry put an end at once to the ringing of the tocsin and to the holy shower. Meantime the tumultous peals of St. Médard's bells had drawn to the spot the "chevalier du guet," one Gabaston, who, on learning the circumstances, promptly lent aid in quelling the disturbance, and arrested a number of the leaders in the riotous proceedings. Yielding to an injudicious impulse, the motley crowd of Huguenots and of persons who had been attracted to the scene by the noise resolved to accompany the prisoners to the "Petit Châtelet," and the march assumed the appearance of a triumphal procession. Between Gabaston's troop of over two hundred mounted and foot archers, and the detachment of Rouge-Oreille, walked a band of unarmed Protestants, followed by the Roman Catholic prisoners, many of them in their ecelesiastical dresses, and tied together two by two. It was deemed little short of a miracle that the procession, even with its escort of soldiery, should be suffered to enter the city and pass through its densely crowded streets on a public holiday, without being attacked by the intensely Roman Catholic populace.[1248]

Such was the famous "tumult of Saint Médard"—the result of a plan adopted expressly to stir up the inveterate hostility of the Parisians against the adherents of the Reformation, and to serve as the pretext for demanding the prohibition of the Protestant "assemblies."[1249] The popular explosion that had been expected instantly to follow the application of the match was deferred until the morrow, when a rabble such as the capital alone could pour forth gutted the interior of the "Patriarche" and would have set it on fire, had it not been repulsed by a small body of Huguenot gentlemen.[1250] The plot had proved abortive; but it was the innocent victims and the friends of good order, not the conspirators, who paid the penalty of the broken law. While the priest of Saint Médard and his accomplices were promptly discharged, without even a reprimand, Gabaston and one "Nez-d'Argent," royal officers who had interfered to restore order, were executed by command of parliament.[1251]

Assembly of notables at St. Germain.

About a week after the occurrence of the seditious disturbance just narrated, the assembly of notables was convened at St. Germain (January, 1562). To this body it was proposed to refer the religious condition of the realm, with the view of reaching some more definite and satisfactory settlement than the "Edict of July," whose provisions had become a dead letter before the ink with which they were written was dry.

Chancellor L'Hospital's opening address.

Diversity of sentiment.

The nuncio's alarm and activity.

The chancellor, who, according to custom, set forth at considerable length the circumstances constraining the king, by his mother's advice, to summon the representatives of his trusty parliaments, with the highest lords of the kingdom, to give him their counsel, dwelt upon the signal failure of all the measures of repression hitherto adopted, and upon the necessity of finding other remedies for the public ills. He disclaimed any intention on the king's part to introduce a discussion respecting the two religions in order to settle their respective merits. It was not to establish the faith, but to regulate the state, that they were assembled. Those who were in no sense Christians might yet be citizens; and, in leaving the Church, a man did not cease to be a good subject of the king. "We can live in peace," he added, "with those who do not observe the same ceremonies and usages, and we can apply to ourselves the current saying: A wife's faults ought either to be cured or to be endured."[1252] When the opinions of the members of the assembly were successively given, the apprehensions entertained by the Romish party, from the very initiation of the plan of the conference, were seen to be well grounded.[1253] The orthodoxy of the sentiments of the majority was by no means above suspicion. The nuncio, Santa Croce, chronicles with alarm the preponderance of those who openly advocated the adoption of lenient measures. It was evident that the Edict of July, with its bloody policy, could command the votes of only a small minority. The pontifical ambassador trembled lest the Protestants should, after all, obtain the largest concessions. He was, consequently, as despondent as ever his predecessor had been.[1254] But, more prudent than the Bishop of Viterbo, he took pains to conceal his fears from the eyes of the courtiers, lest he should furnish the Huguenots with fresh means of influencing the wavering government. Accordingly, instead of giving up everything as lost, he spared neither time nor money, besieging the doors of the grandees who were believed to be true friends of the Holy See, and entreating them to dismiss all intention of leaving the court, and thus abandoning the field to their enemies.[1255] He even sought an interview with Catharine de' Medici, and, in company with the Spanish ambassador, offered her the united forces of the Pope and of Philip to repress any disturbances that might arise from the adoption of a course unpalatable to the Huguenots; and he returned from the audience persuaded that "these preachers would obtain no churches, and would gain nothing from the conference."[1256]

In this conclusion, however, the nuncio was but partially correct. It is true that the small faction favoring an adherence to the old persecuting policy succeeded, by uniting with the advocates of a limited toleration, in defeating the project of the more liberal party;[1257] but, as will be seen, it was by no means true that Protestantism gained nothing by the results of the deliberations.

The Edict of January.

These results were embodied in the famous law which, from the circumstance that it was signed on the seventeenth of January. 1562, is known in history as the "Edict of January." It began by repealing the provisional edict of the preceding July, because, in consequence of its sweeping prohibition of all public and private assemblies, it had failed of accomplishing the objects intended, as was clear from the more aggravated seditions ensuing. It ordained that "those of the new religion" should give up all the churches they had seized, and prohibited them from building others, whether inside or outside of the cities. But the cardinal prescription was that, while all assemblages for the purpose of listening to preaching, either by day or by night, were forbidden within the walled cities, the penalties should be suspended "provisionally and until the determination of a general council" in the case of unarmed gatherings for religious worship held by day outside these limits. The Protestants, both on their way to their services and on their return, were to be exempt from molestation on the part of the royal magistrates, who were enjoined to punish all seditious persons, whatever might be their religion. The ministers were commanded to inquire carefully into the life and morals of those whom they admitted to their communion, to permit royal officers to be present at all their religious exercises, and to take a solemn oath before the local magistrates to observe this ordinance, promising, at the same time, to teach no doctrines at variance with the true word of God as contained in the Nicene Creed and in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. Inflammatory and insulting harangues were forbidden alike to the Romish and the Protestant preachers. All seditious combinations, the enrolment of troops, and the levy of money, were prohibited; nor could even an ecclesiastical synod or consistory be held without the previous consent of the royal officers and in their presence.[1258]

The Huguenots no longer outlaws.

Such were the most important features of a law the promulgation of which marks the termination of the first great period in the history of the Huguenots of France—the period of persecution inflicted mainly according to cruel legal ordinances and under the forms of judicial procedure. From the moment of the publication of this charter—imperfect and inadequate as it manifestly was—the Huguenots ceased to be outlaws, and became, in the eye of the law, at least, a class entitled within certain limits to the protection of the ministers of justice. Unhappily for France, the solemn recognition of Protestant rights was scarcely conceded by representatives of the entire nation before an attempt was made by a desperate faction to annul and overturn it by intrigue and violence. The next act in this remarkable drama is, therefore, the inauguration of the period of Civil War, or of oppression exercised in defiance of acknowledged rights and of the accepted principles of equity—a lamentable period, in which every bloody contest originated in the determination of the one party to circumscribe or destroy, and of the other to maintain in its integrity the fundamental basis of toleration laid down in the Edict of January.