Chapter I

CALVIN AT GENEVA AND IN THE PAYS DE VAUD.

(1536.)

For years, and even for centuries, persistent and perilous endeavors had been made at Geneva for a firm establishment of freedom. We have already described some of the impressive scenes which marked the successful close of these efforts at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the noble principles and the mighty words of the energetic laborers in this great enterprise.[373] It would certainly be going too far to consider their labors and the truths which they announced as the source whence our modern liberties have sprung. But it is impossible to study the events of that epoch without emotion, or without recognizing aspirations, principles, sacrifices, and actions worthy of admiration, which were in fact the first great burst of light, the first noteworthy manifestation of the politics and the virtues which must determine the existence and make the prosperity of nations.[374]

That small town was, however, to give to the world a higher lesson still. It was to do for religion what it had first done for politics, and to render to faith the service which it had rendered to freedom. These two achievements are closely related to each other; and it is one of the characteristics of this history, that while it attributes transcendent importance to Christian truth and life, it recognizes at the same time all that is great and salutary in freedom. If the author, as some have thought, had erred in assigning too high a place to the heroic struggles to which Geneva owed her independence, he would assuredly regret that he had not more skilfully handled the pen of the historian for the purpose of immortalizing the great men and the heroic actions of which the smallest and humblest of states afforded the spectacle. But he would count himself fortunate if he should, nevertheless, have contributed to bring into clear light the great maxim, that political freedom and Christian truth must advance hand in hand for the salvation of nations and the salvation of souls. Of course, a blind demagogy, the formidable rock of our age, is at once contrary to freedom and hostile to religion.

Geneva was fitted by various concurring conditions to play a part from which the small extent of her territory seemed inevitably to shut her out. Situated as this town was between Italy, France, and Germany, its position formed the central point of the three great nations who were distinguished in the first half of the sixteenth century for their new or newly awakened love of letters, philosophy, and the arts. On several occasions Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans came in large numbers to settle at Geneva. By the reception of these three diverse elements into her bosom she seemed to be called to blend them with each other and to harmonize their opposing qualities. If any spark from the evangelical fire which was then kindled should chance to escape from either of those countries and to fall on the materials thus prepared at the foot of the Alps, it might kindle a great fire, and might make Geneva a hearth from which light, radiating far and wide, should contribute to scatter the humiliating darkness which Rome and those princes whose power was at her service then made to weigh heavily on the nations.

[Sidenote: JOHN CALVIN.]

This is what actually came to pass. To convert the spark into a pure, vivid, dazzling light, there was need of an intellect of vast depth, a will of vast energy, and a faith of vast power.

God sent the man that was needed.

A young stranger, a native of Picardie, had lately arrived at Geneva. It had not occurred to him nor to his friends that he could be the organ by whose agency and means God would bring about such great ends. After his arrival Farel still continued to hold the first place in the city. This young man, John Calvin, was naturally timid, and was possessed by a dread of publicity which had already shown itself at Basel and which led him to shun every occasion that would draw public attention to himself. He was fond of study and of writing: and in that path he believed that it was appointed for him to contribute to the diffusion in the world of a truth which was already dearer to him than life. He purposed to turn to account that one talent in retirement, without quitting his study. That is what he was then doing at Geneva. He was steadily engaged in translating into French his ‘_little book_,’ the _Institution Chrétienne_, which he hoped ere long to send to his friends in France.[375] The letter mentioned in the note shows clearly that the _Institution Chrétienne_ was first written in Latin.

Farel wished for more: he desired Calvin to become, at Geneva, pastor, preacher, and doctor. The young man refused this threefold function. The office of pastor would have required him to take part in the government of the Church, and he was not willing to do so. As to the office of preacher, we have the most positive testimony of his contemporaries and of his most intimate friends that, in the fresh glow of his faith, he had simply undertaken the task of an evangelist in some districts of France. But the post which was offered to him at Geneva would have compelled him to mix more or less in public affairs and in the debates of the councils. He trembled at the thought, and wished rather to confine himself strictly within the bounds of that literary and theological life which he loved so well. He consented therefore to dwell in the city, not for the purpose of preaching, but to read in theology.[376] He went even further. ‘I would not,’ he said, ‘bind myself to undertake an official charge.’[377] He consented to make trial of teaching, but without any title or any engagement, and thus reserved to himself perfect liberty. Probably no one ever entered as he did on a career at once painful and brilliant without suspecting its results, and even rejecting it with his utmost energy.

[Sidenote: CHURCH DISCIPLINE.]

Calvin commenced his work as Reader in the Holy Scriptures at Geneva, or, as he styles himself, Professor of Sacred Literature in the Genevese Church. His lectures were delivered not in any house or in any academic hall, but in the cathedral itself, a circumstance which invested his teaching with an importance of which Calvin had certainly not dreamed. The doors were opened for this novel service in the afternoon, and the Genevese, who felt the need of substantial teaching, crowded to hear the young doctor. He expounded several books of the New Testament, particularly the Epistles. One characteristic of his manner of teaching at Geneva from the first was the combination of simplicity and solidity. A new light was then rising. It was not, to be sure, the sun in its brightness. The timidity and the shyness which Calvin attributes to himself may well have shown themselves in his first attempts. The _Commentaries_ on the New Testament, which he published at a later period, have a completeness which his earliest expositions could not attain. But they are a sufficiently faithful representation of the kind of teaching which he adopted at St. Peter’s church. It was not grammatical and etymological explanation of the text; nor was it, on the other hand, a pathetic discourse. Calvin set forth in clear light everything in the Scriptures which characterizes the Christian doctrine and life. He first meditated on his subject, then delivered his lectures extempore; and the animated and powerful individuality of the master imparted to them an influence which carried away and multiplied his hearers. It was not in his nature to do a merely intellectual task. He consoled, he exhorted, he censured. But his chief aim was to illustrate the labor of love which Jesus Christ had accomplished, and to make known its necessity and grandeur. Two points in the Christian doctrine especially struck him, the one dark and mournful, the other bright like sunshine. ‘Our souls,’ said he, ‘are an abyss of iniquity, so that we are compelled to have recourse to the fountain of all good, which is Jesus Christ.’[378]

[Sidenote: CHURCH DISCIPLINE.]

The exposition, defence, and application of the great facts of Christianity formed the substance of Calvin’s work at Geneva and in Christendom. It is a mistake to suppose that his principal business was the introduction and the maintenance of discipline in the Church. It is not to be doubted that he wished for order: that he wished absolutely for a Christian way of life; but it was not he who, as some believe, first introduced measures of discipline, nor was the maintenance of those measures the task of his life. Speaking of them,[379] he defends himself from the charge of being their author. ‘I observe and do whatsoever I have found,’ said he, ‘as one who takes no pleasure in making any innovation.’ It was the magistrate, who, being in Geneva head both of the Church and of the state, prescribed and enforced the laws of discipline. Before Calvin’s arrival at Geneva, we have seen how De la Rive was sentenced to banishment for having his child baptized by a priest. The year before some men, women, and magistrates had been condemned to the _crotton_ (black hole) for immorality. At the moment at which this stranger, whose name even was hardly known, had just crossed the threshold of the city--on the eve of the day on which Farel was to introduce him to the magistrate (Monday, September 4, 1536)--a remarkable scene was taking place in the Council of the Two Hundred, which seems placed at that epoch as if on purpose to resolve distinctly the question which engages our attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the syndics, ‘we have all pledged ourselves in public council to live according to the Gospel, and nevertheless there are some here who do not go to preaching.’ At these words the councillor and former syndic Richardet, a fine, tall, and powerful man, but very passionate, rose in wrath and exclaimed with loud voice, ‘Nobody shall lord it over my conscience; and I will not go to sermon at the bidding of a Syndic Porral.’[380] Porral, a man of highly cultivated mind and a very active magistrate, had declared himself decisively for the Reform, and he was even charged to prosecute certain classes of delinquents. It had been enacted, on July 24, that those who refused to go to the preaching must quit the city in ten days. Richardet was not alone in his resolution. The question having been put to J. Philippe and two other councillors whether they would attend the preaching of the Word of God, ‘We will not be compelled,’ they said, ‘but will live in our liberty.’ These citizens were right in maintaining their liberty, and the magistrates were in the wrong. Calvin was far away from Geneva on July 24; and, generally speaking, he was not of so peremptory a temper as some imagine. There was a certain sphere in which he maintained liberty, and maintained it even against powerful adversaries. ‘Touching ceremonies,’ thus he wrote to the formidable lords of Berne, ‘they are things indifferent, and the churches are free to adopt a diversity of them.’[381] Still, we cannot deny it, Calvin thought--and these are his own words--that since there is no house, however small it be, which can be maintained in its proper state without discipline, it is much more requisite in the Church, which ought to be better ordered than any house. He went further. He asserted that the state has the right and is bound to take notice of matters of discipline, and to punish transgressors. It is to be regretted that the fine genius of Calvin did not make an exception in this case to the rule adopted ten centuries earlier by all Christendom, and that he did not convince the state that its heavy hand must not intervene in matters of religion. It is however fair to ask ourselves whether, in the sixteenth century, such an effort would not have been a superhuman task.

Calvin himself made known to us his own thought when he said, ‘THE DOCTRINE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS THE SOUL OF THE CHURCH.’[382] He set forth that doctrine in the church of St. Peter just as it is found in Scripture, and so diffused it in the world. Certainly it was not by discipline that he made his conquests. He bore the torch of truth. Devoid of ambition, having no designs reaching beyond Geneva, without any secret policy such as the Jesuits are skilled in, and armed with one weapon only, the truth, he triumphed over the greatest difficulties. Farel, Viret, Beza would not have sufficed. In this man of feeble constitution and humble aspect there were an unquenchable resolution, an energetic will. _He held fast, as seeing him who is invisible._ Established in this small town, he became God’s instrument, first for the spread of the Reformation in the West, then for defending it against the attacks of Rome and Loyola and Philip II. A new time was born for the world.

Nevertheless it was not Calvin alone, as some appear to believe, who effected this great revolution. Had he come into the midst of a people indolent and effeminate, such victories would not have been won. But the Genevese had been preparing for centuries, by means of the struggles which they had gone through, for the maintenance of their liberty. A life of toil, incessant industry, and rude combats had inured them to blows. Their souls had been elevated. They were naturally keen and decisive; but that iron, already brilliant, had acquired by tempering an inflexible hardness. The heroism of the Huguenots of Geneva became one of the elements which contributed to the triumph of the Reformation. The character of those strong men was as essential to the work as coal is for the conversion of iron into steel. It was not Calvin the individual, it was Geneva in its entirety, that vanquished Rome. The energy of the Bertheliers, the Lévriers, and of many others, was one of the ingredients of the moral energy of which Geneva became the hearth, and which had almost disappeared from history. The most earnest of the Genevese Huguenots joined the reformer; the masses supported him; and some Frenchmen who had passed through the sieve of persecution, worthy also to be called Huguenots, gave the hand to the sons of Geneva. And when, after achieving its triumph, the Reformation found itself attacked by a numerous and powerful army, assembled under the banners of kings, of Ignatius Loyola, and the pope, Geneva and the men of her school, who were found in all parts of Christendom, were able to resist the hostile force, and to say to it, ‘No further shalt thou go!’

[Sidenote: CALVIN RETAINED AT GENEVA.]

There was, indeed, in the struggle for the renewal of Christendom, one will which conceived, one personality which acted, one voice which resounded with a force till then almost unknown, and in a thousand directions: it was, next to Luther’s, that of Calvin. But while a great general is indispensable in the day of battle, so also is an army trained by him for energetic conflict. The part which Geneva played in the sixteenth century is not explained by the character of one man alone, but by many concurrent circumstances both moral and political. That army, created by a vivifying breath from on high, was soon in action wherever a struggle became necessary. Those soldiers went forth into the world, braved danger, displayed their colors, and proclaimed salvation, until at length Rome gave them the martyr’s death, and God gave them the crown of immortality. CALVIN and the HUGUENOTS, that is the great motto of the sixteenth century.

Farel, as we have seen, had taken on himself the responsibility of enrolling the young doctor and of opening to him the church of St. Peter. Charmed with Calvin’s method of exposition of the Holy Scriptures, that veteran champion of the Reformation expressed his opinion on the subject to the magistrates. On Tuesday, September 5, 1536, the day after the famous altercation respecting religious liberty had taken place in the Council of the Two Hundred, William Farel appeared before the council and gave an account of the teaching of the young foreigner, which some of the members of that body had probably attended, and added--‘The lectures which this Frenchman[383] has begun at St. Peter’s are very necessary. I therefore entreat you to retain him and to make provision for his maintenance.’ The council determined to advise that the stranger, whose name was not even uttered, should be retained. Many had seen him. The pale countenance, the spare form, the modest bearing, the timorous air of this refugee of twenty-seven, had not given the impression of his being a person of note. The council did not even make him a present of a dress or anything of the kind, as it was customary to do. It waited, no doubt, to see whether it was worth while. The man whose name was shortly to fill the city and the whole Christian world, entered almost _incognito_ into Geneva. Every one was at that time thinking of Farel. On September 8 that reformer, ‘having addressed a remonstrance to the council,’ it was resolved ‘that since the writings of the aforesaid Guillaume _are so divine_, he should preach at six o’clock in the morning in the church of St. Germain, and that the councillors should be bound to attend there, and pass thence, at seven, into the council.’[384]

Calvin’s lectures were soon interrupted. At the end of September, Farel with his young friend as his assistant quitted Geneva to go to Lausanne, whither an urgent duty called them. An important assembly was going to be held in the chief city of the Pays de Vaud.

Farel, Viret, and other evangelists, as already related, had introduced the Reformation into such parts of that country as were subject to the Swiss cantons; but the other parishes of that fair land had still remained subject to the pope. Meanwhile Luther’s writings were everywhere circulated, the eyes of the people began to be opened, and several evangelists, particularly Jean Lecomte, a gentleman of Picardie, had preached the Gospel in various places. The occupation of the country by the Bernese, on occasion of the expedition which delivered Geneva in 1536, hastened the fall of Roman Catholicism. When the Bernese had taken Yverdon with the sword, they transformed the church of that town in a somewhat soldierly fashion. They bluntly put an end to the exercise of the Romish religion; appointed Malingre to be minister; on March 15 had their religious ordinances published; burnt, March 17, the images out of the churches in the market-place, and ordered the ministers to preach in temples cleared of those abominations. Lecomte, Tissot, Meige, and other evangelists introduced the Reform, but by the spiritual means of preaching, at Cossonay, Montagny, Yvonand, Sainte-Croix, and other places. Avenches and Lutry showed themselves decidedly Catholic, and they determined that if by any chance a minister should go there, they would not go to hear him.

[Sidenote: THE GOSPEL IN THE PAYS DE VAUD.]

In March 1536, as Viret and Fabry were passing near Yverdon during the siege of that town by the Bernese army, some Lausannese officers who were serving in it and who were acquainted with Viret, stopped him and said, ‘When Yverdon is taken, we shall go to Lausanne: come with us and preach the Gospel there in spite of the bishop.’ They did so. The amiable and discreet Viret would have been ill pleased to see Lausanne reformed by the military method, like Yverdon. He preferred the sword of the Spirit to that of the Bernese soldiery. He would choose that, in the sloping streets of that city and within its beautiful cathedral, the still small voice should be heard, and not the hissing of the tempest and the crash of thunder. He preached therefore the ‘glad tidings of great joy,’ and preached them with success, in the church of the convent of St. Francis. The Canons complained bitterly to the council. ‘A strange thing this,’ they said, ‘to see in Lausanne _two_ preachers at a time! A whole multitude of do-nothing monks, well and good! But two preachers of Jesus Christ, what useless waste!’ ‘The less preaching there is the better,’ said the friends of Rome. ‘The more preaching the better,’ said the friends of the Gospel. If the Canons did their duty, remarked some one, instead of two preachers we should have thirty.[385] The burgesses, as usual, took a middle course which must fail to satisfy either one party or the other. They resolved that the evangelists should preach in the church of Mary Magdalene, but without removing the altars, the fonts, the organs, the images, and other decorations, ‘which did no harm to anybody,’ said the burgesses; and that the friars of the Dominican order should also celebrate in the same church the Roman Catholic service in the usual way.[386] That is what the great Saxon reformer called ‘trying to bring together Luther and the pope.’

[Sidenote: IMAGE WORSHIP.]

Viret therefore preached in that church. But when Lent was come, the Dominican Monbouson began to discourse in the cathedral, and maintained their Romish traditions with violence and plenty of lying. Viret was informed of it, and as he thought that the best way to refute the papal doctrine was to make it distinctly known, he put in writing the assertions of the friar and called upon him publicly to defend them, announcing that he was prepared to reply to him. Monbouson felt strong enough to maintain his thesis when he stood surrounded by a whole phalanx of scholastic doctors and had nobody to contradict him, but he grew pale in the presence of the young Viret. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘I would gladly do what you propose at Avignon, at Paris, or at Dôle; but at Lausanne there is nobody capable of judging of the matter.’--‘You ought then to preach only at Dôle, Paris, or Avignon,’ replied Viret; ‘but since you have lied at Lausanne, it is at Lausanne that satisfaction is due.’ Then the friar, anxious to get out of his embarrassment, withdrew in the quietest manner and disappeared.[387] The reformed Christians did not think, with those gentlemen of Lausanne, that images, altars, etc., did nobody any harm. They believed that the paintings did harm. They believed that the people, thanks to the images, made for themselves many minor gods before which they bent their knees in order to obtain this or that favor, or the healing of this or that malady: that the visible made them forget the invisible: that it was frightful to think that, every time some simple soul came to worship God in his temple, those figures of saints became occasions of falling or of scandal. ‘Alas!’ they said, ‘how many poor creatures called to be children of God have been made by those images children of the devil!’ Those, therefore, of the reformed of Lausanne, in whose judgment the pictures of saints and angels seduced and almost inevitably led astray the weak, began to stir in the matter. Commencing with the church of the Magdalene, they removed the images and the altars and broke or burnt them. Then betaking themselves to the church of St. Francis, they did the same there, and counted themselves happy in thus keeping the commandment, _Thou shalt have no other gods before me_. The old folk of Lausanne, who were already disconsolate at being left without a bishop, were still more distressed when they found themselves deprived of their images and their masses; and they sent deputies to Berne to complain of it. The Bernese council listened to them with all politeness, and dismissed them with good words. Lausanne then sent another deputation, consisting of twelve persons of distinction. At Berne they were asked, ‘What is it that you want?’ ‘Two masses weekly,’ they replied, according to a Lausannese manuscript.[388] If the statement is true, the request was certainly very moderate for zealous Catholics. The concession was made to them, but it was coupled with the condition that they should provide ministers for all the churches that asked for them. At the same time they gave them to understand that it would be well to hold at Lausanne a great disputation on religion, in order to decide between Rome and Reform. That was a good deal to ask for the two masses which were granted them.

The Bernese, indeed, were anxious that the Vaudois, whose country they had recently conquered, should attach themselves to the Reformation. It was no doubt partly from a regard to political interests that they wished this, but they did not overlook the interest of religion. Be that as it may, the reformation of religion in that country was a source of great prosperity both temporal and spiritual. The Pays de Vaud was to offer the stranger, at a later time, not only those beauties of nature which excite our admiration, but still more, numerous examples of sincere and vital piety, which is far sweeter and pleasanter than its lakes, and more sublime than its peaks and glaciers. The seed which was scattered at the epoch of the Reformation, in its valleys and on its mountains, was truly the Word of God; and one cannot but see there the fulfilment of that ancient oracle, _He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap everlasting life_.

The conversion of Yverdon had been somewhat checked by the siege which the town had sustained. The lords of Berne wished in general to employ, like Viret, evangelical means; to reveal to their new subjects the grosser superstitions under whose yoke they had been held, and to give them the knowledge of the truth. For that end they resolved to appoint first a public disputation such as had been held at Zurich, Berne, and Geneva. As soon as the report was circulated in the country that a great assembly for discussion on matters of faith was to be held at Lausanne, the priests and their friends were alarmed. The excitement extended to all the villages. The friends of the papacy expected to see black clouds gathering on the horizon, and a violent storm presently burst on the old ship which had carried their fathers, and make it founder, thus engulfing in the depths of the sea all the traditions of their doctrine and all the pomps of their worship. They determined to do everything in their power to oppose such an assembly, and they wrote to the bishop and to the council at Friburg, to the pope and to the emperor.

[Sidenote: A DISPUTATION APPOINTED.]

The cry of distress which they uttered was heard. The council of Friburg sent a deputation to Berne to oppose the projected meeting. Charles V., who was then in Italy, addressed a letter to the council of _his imperial city_, requiring it ‘to prevent that disputation as well as any change in matters of faith, to restore everything to its former state, to allow nothing contrary to the tenor of his edicts, and to await quietly the council.’ This missive was dated from Savigliano, July 3, 1536.[389]

It was evident that the country had arrived at a critical pass, and that it was necessary to find some way of escape. The remedy proposed by the priests and the monks was,--to draw back. They assailed the Reformation from the pulpit, and they hurried from house to house and circulated in the streets the most outrageous reports against the reformed and the Reformation. Some of them opposed the disputation by asserting that ‘the ministers are magicians who have in their service a multitude of demons by means of which they bewitch their hearers.’ Other priests made up their mind to put a good face on the matter. They blustered a good deal; they bragged of having already won many a victory over their adversaries. ‘Let them only give us permission to contend with them in a regular discussion,’ they said, ‘and we are strong enough to beat them.’[390]

The council of Berne no longer hesitated. Without awaiting the possible decision of the emperor, they issued, July 16, an edict in opposition to the orders of Charles. ‘We desire,’ the edict ran, ‘that the people of our territories, (which by the grace of God we have justly acquired by conquest,) should walk with all their hearts in the way which our Lord has commanded. Nevertheless that has not been done, and even gross insults have been offered to the preachers and to those who wished to follow the Gospel. Desirous of putting in order all these confused affairs, we enjoin all priests and monks, as well as the preachers, to present themselves at Lausanne, on October 1 next, for the purpose of proving what they believe, freely and frankly, by argument on the grounds of Holy Scripture. We address this appeal not only to those of our own territories, but to all comers and goers, of whatsoever nation they be, and we promise them safe-keeping. We further order that our priests and preachers attend the assembly from its opening to its close, without default, and under pain of our indignation.’[391]

A few days after the edict of Berne, some Savoyard ambassadors, on their way to the diet of Berne, delivered the emperor’s letter to the council of Lausanne. That body having laid on the table side by side the epistle of his Catholic majesty and the edict of the lords of Berne, found themselves, to their great dismay, placed between the anvil and the hammer. Pressed thus by the two conflicting parties, they foresaw nothing but calamity whether they resisted the one or the other. The imperial document was read to the general council July 23. Its members, the majority of whom were attached to the Romish Church, thought that the wisest plan was to obey the most powerful, and therefore, sheltering themselves under the order of the great potentate, they enacted that the parties should live peaceably together, but that no innovation should be made until after the decision of the council. At the same time a deputation set out for Berne in order to prevent the disputation. But all was useless. Berne was stronger than the Emperor Charles V. That prince was in Italy, and the absent are in the wrong.