Chapter X: Part 10

Within eleven years, 1555-1566--Calvin died in 1564--it is known that Geneva sent one hundred sixty-one pastors into France; how many more may have gone unrecorded we cannot tell. And they were learned men, strenuous, fearless, praised by a French bishop as modest, grave, saintly, with the name of Jesus Christ ever on their lips. Charles IX implored the magistrates of Geneva to stop the supply and withdraw the men already sent; but the magistrates replied that the preachers had been sent not by them, but by their ministers, who believed that the sovereign duty of all princes and kings was to do homage to Him who had given to them their dominion. It was small wonder that the Venetian Suriano should describe Geneva as "the mine whence came the ore of heresy"; or that the Protestants should gather courage as they heard the men from Geneva sing psalms in the face of torture and death.

It was indeed a very different France which the eyes of the dying Calvin saw from that which the young man had seen thirty years before. Religious hate was even more bitter and vindictive; war had come and made persecution more ferocious; but the Huguenots had grown numerous, potent, respected, feared, and disputed with Catholicism the supremacy of the kingdom. And Calvin had done it, not by arms nor by threats, nor by encouragement of sedition or insurrection--to such action he was ever resolutely opposed--but by the agency of the men whom he formed in Geneva, and by their persuasive speech. The reformed minister was essentially a preacher, intellectual, exegetical, argumentative, seriously concerned with the subjects that most appealed to the serious-minded.

Modern oratory may be said to begin with him, and indeed to be his creation. He helped to make the vernacular tongues of Western Europe literary. He accustomed the people to hear the gravest and most sacred themes discussed in the language which they knew; and the themes ennobled the language, the language was never allowed to degrade the themes. And there was no tongue and no people that he influenced more than the French. Calvin made Bossuet and Massillon possible; as a preacher he found his successor in Bourdaloue; and a literary critic who does not love him has expressed a doubt as to whether Pascal could be more eloquent or was so profound. And the ideal then realized in Geneva exercised an influence far beyond France. It extended into Holland, which in the strength of the reformed faith resisted Charles V and his son, achieved independence, and created the freest and best educated state on the continent of Europe.

John Knox breathed for a while the atmosphere of Geneva, was subdued into the likeness of the man who had made it, and when he went home he copied its education and tried to repeat its reformation. English reformers, fleeing from martyrdom, found a refuge within its hospitable walls, and, returning to England, attempted to establish a Genevan discipline, and failed, but succeeded in forming the Puritan character. If the author of the _Ordonnances ecclesiastiques_ accomplished, whether directly or indirectly, so much, we need not hesitate to term him a notable friend to civilization.

JEAN M. V. AUDIN

When the sword of the law fell upon one of his followers, the voice of Luther was magnificent; it exclaimed, in the ears of emperors, kings, and dukes, "You have shed the blood of the just," and then the Saxon, in honor of the martyr, extemporized a hymn which was chanted in the very face of the civil power:

"In the Low Countries, at Brussels,
The Lord his greatness hath displayed,
In the death of two of his loved children
On whom grand gifts he had bestowed."

Calvin had not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian, trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him which could deserve celebrity. And yet he essayed a timid protest in favor of certain Huguenots who had been burned on the public square. "The work," says Prince Masson, "of a double-faced writer, a Catholic in his writings and a Lutheran in his bedchamber."

This is his first book. It is entitled _de Clementia_ (or _Treatise on Clemency_), and is a paraphrase of some Latin writer of the decline. Moreover, this is the first time that a commentator is ignorant of the life of him whose work he publishes. Calvin has confounded the two Senecas, the father and the son; the rhetorician and the philosopher, of both of whom he makes but one literary personage, living the very patriarchal life of more than one hundred fifteen years.

We must pardon Varillas for having, with sufficient acrimony, brought into relief this mistake of the biographer of Seneca the philosopher, and not, like the historians of the Reformation, become vexed at the proud tone of the French historian. Had the fault been committed by a Catholic, where is the Protestant who would not have done the same thing as Varillas?

The literary work which Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians, moralists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and philologists.

Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his memory. His work is a gallery, open to all the modern and ancient glories of literature, whom the commentator calls to his aid, often for the elucidation of a doubtful passage. The young rhetorician glorifies his country, and when upon his march he encounters some historic name, by which his idea can be illustrated, he hastens to proclaim it, with all its titles to admiration. He there salutes Bude in magnificent terms: "Bude, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom, at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition." The portrait which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: "Seneca, whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves on, free and unembarrassed." It may be seen that the student had the honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective allegory; for what reader could have divined that the writer designed to represent Francis I, under the name of Nero, as addressed by the Cordovan? The treatise could produce no sensation, and, like the work of Seneca, must be shipwrecked in that sea of the passions which, at the two epochs, raged around both writers.

Calvin experienced much trouble in having his Latin commentary printed; he was in need of funds, and the revenues of his benefice of Pont l'Eveque were insufficient to defray the expense of printing. How could he apply to the Mommor family? Moreover, he was in dread that his book should prove a failure and thereby injure his budding reputation. All these alarms of a maiden author are set forth in various letters which he addressed on this subject to the dear friends of his bosom.

"Behold my books of Seneca concerning clemency, printed at my own expense and labor! They must now be sold, in order that I may again obtain the money which I have expended. I must also watch that my reputation does not suffer. You will oblige me, then, by informing me how the work has been received, whether with favor or indifference." The whole anxiety of the poor author is to lose nothing by the enterprise; his purse is empty; it needs replenishing; and he urges the professors to give circulation to the treatise; he solicits one of his friends at Bourges, a member of the university, to bring it forward in his lectures; and appeals to the aid of Daniel, to whom he sent a hundred copies. Papire Masson was mistaken: the commentary on clemency did not first appear, as he supposes, under the title of _Lucius Calvinus, civis Romanus_, but under that of _Calvinus_, a name ever after retained by the reformer.

This treatise introduced Calvin to the notice of the learned world: Bucer, Capito, Padius, sent congratulations to the writer; Calvin, in September, 1532, had sent a copy of his work to Bucer, who was then at Strasburg. The person commissioned to present it was a poor young man, suspected of Anabaptism, and a refugee from France. Calvin's letter of recommendation is replete with tender compassion for the miseries of the sinner. "My dear Bucer," he writes, "you will not be deaf to my entreaties, you will not disregard my tears; I implore you, to come to the aid of the proscribed, be a father to the orphan."

This was sending the sick man to a sad physician. Bucer, by turns Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian! Besides, why this proselytism of a moral _cure_? The exile was Anabaptist by the same title as Calvin was predestinarian, in virtue of a text of Scripture: "Go; whoever shall believe and be baptized will be saved." The Anabaptist believed in the inefficacy of baptism without faith manifested by an external act; but is not Calvin, at this very hour, as much to be pitied as the Anabaptist? He also doubted, searched, and interrogated his Bible, and imagined that he had caught the meaning of a letter which no intelligence before him had been able to seize. And what was this truth, the conquest of which infused such fear into his soul that, before he could announce it to the world, he sold his charge of Pont l'Eveque and even his paternal inheritance?

In the year 1531 John Calvin presented himself before Simon Legendre and Peter le Roy, royal notaries at Paris, to invest his brothers with powers of attorney to sell what had been left him by his father and mother.

"To all to whom these present letters shall come; John de la Barre, Chevalier Count d'Estampes, Governor of Paris and chief of the judicial tribunal of said city, greeting: We make known that before Simon Legendre and Peter le Roy, notaries of our lord the King, at Paris, came in person Master John Calvin, licentiate at law, and Anthony Cauvin, his brother, clerk, living at Paris, and sons of Gerard Cauvin--while yet alive, secretary of M. the Bishop of Noyon--and of Jeanne le Franc, his wife; who jointly and severally make, name, ordain, appoint, and establish as their general agent and special attorney Master Charles Cauvin, their brother, to whom bearing these present letters they grant, and by these presents do give, full power and right to sell, concede, and alienate, to whatever person or persons the two undivided thirds belonging to the aforesaid constituents, coming to them in proper right of succession by the demise of the aforesaid deceased Jeanne le Franc, their mother; also the fourth undivided part of a piece of meadow, containing fourteen acres or thereabouts, situated in the territory of Noyon, and pertaining on one part to the wood of Chastelain; on another, to the monks and sisters of the Hotel-Dieu of St. John, at Noyon; on another, to the nuns and abbess of the French convent, the Abbey aux Bois, and to the chapter of the church of Notre Dame, of the said city, and running up to the highway passing from Noyon to Genury; to make sale and alienation of the same, for such price and at such costs as the aforesaid Master Charles Cauvin, their brother, shall judge for the better; to collect the money and give security, with lien upon all their future possessions.

"Done, and passed, on Wednesday, the fifteenth day of February, in the year 1531."

Some short time after this, Calvin resigned his charge of the Chapel de la Gesine to Anthony de la Marliere, _Mediante pretio conventionis_, for the sum agreed on, says the act of transfer, and also surrendered his benefice of Pont l'Eveque for a similar consideration.

The storm was gathering. Calvin wished to expose to its fury some other head than his own, and chose that of Nicolas Cop, rector of the Sorbonne, at Paris. Cop was a German of Basel, who was captivated with the student because of his ready speech, his airs of virtue, his scriptural knowledge, his railleries against the monks, and his ridicule of the university. As to the rest, he was a man of a dull, heavy mind, understood nothing of theological subjects, and would have been much better placed in a refectory than in a learned body; at table than in the professor's chair. Cop had to pronounce his usual discourse on All Saints' Day, in presence of the Sorbonne and the university. He had recourse to Calvin, who set to work and "built him up a discourse," says Beza--"an oration quite different from those which were customary." The Sorbonne and university did not assist at the discourse, but only some Franciscans, who appeared to be scandalized at certain propositions of the orator, and among others at one concerning justification by faith alone in Christ--an old error, which, for many ages, has been trailed along in all the writings of heretics; often dead and resuscitated--and which Calvin, in Cop's discourse, dressed out in tinsel in order to give it some appearance of novelty. But our Franciscans had sight and hearing equally as good; they detected the heresy easily, and denounced to the parliament the evil-sounding propositions, which they had taken pains to note down in writing. Cop was greatly embarrassed by his new glory; he had not expected so much fame. He, however, held up well and convoked the university at the Mathurins. The university assembled in a body in order to judge the cause. The rector there commenced a discourse, drawn up by Calvin, in which he formally denied having preached the propositions denounced, with the exception of one only, precisely the worst, that concerning justification. Imagine the tumult which the orator excited! Scarcely could he make himself heard, and ask mercy. The old Sorbonnists shuddered on their benches. The unfortunate Cop would have been seized had he not made his escape, to return no more.

The student kept himself concealed at the College du Forbet, which was already surrounded by a body of archers headed by John Morin. Calvin was warned of their approach. "He escaped through a window, concealed himself in the suburb St. Victor, at the house of a vine-dresser, changed his clothes, assumed the long gown of the vine-dresser, and, placing a wallet of white linen and a rake on his shoulders, he took the road to Noyon." A canon of that city, who was on his way to Paris, met the _cure_ of Pont l'Eveque and recognized him.

"Where are you going, Master John," he demanded, "in this fine disguise?"

"Where God shall please," answered Calvin, who then began to explain the motive and reasons of his disguise. "And would you not do better to return to Noyon and to God?" asked the canon, looking at him sadly. Calvin was a moment silent, then, taking the priest's hand--"Thank you," said he, "but it is too late."

During this colloquy the lieutenant was searching Calvin's papers, and secured those which might have compromised the friends of the fugitive.

Calvin found a refuge with the Queen of Navarre, who was fortunate enough to reconcile her _protege_ with the court and the university. The person whom she employed to effect this was an adroit man who had succeeded in deceiving the government. Francis I based his glory upon the patronage and encouragement which he accorded to learning, and Calvin, as a man of letters, merited consideration. The King needed some forgiveness for serious political faults, and, with reason, he believed that the humanists would redeem his character before the people. He was at once the protector and the slave of the _literati_.

At that period the little court of Nerac was the asylum of writers, who, like Desperriers, there prepared their _Cymbalum Mundi_; of gallant ladies, who composed love-tales, of which they were often the heroines themselves; of poets, who extemporized odes after Beza's model; of clerics and other gentry of the Church, who entertained packs of hunting-dogs, and courtesans; of Italian play-actors, who, in the Queen's theatre, presented comedies taken from the New Testament, in which Jesus was made to utter horrible things against monks and nuns; or of princes, who, like the Queen's husband, scarcely knew how to read, and yet discoursed, like doctors, about doctrine and discipline.

It was against Roussel, the confessor of Margaret, that Calvin, at a later date, composed his _Adversus Nicodemitas_. At Nerac he found Le Fevre d'Etaples, who had fled the wrath of the Sorbonne, and who "regarded the young man with a benignant eye, predicting that he was to become the author of the restoration of the Church in France." Le Fevre recalls to our mind that priest about whom Mathesius tells us, who said to Luther, when sick: "My child, you will not die; God has great designs in your regard." As to the rest, James le Fevre d'Etaples was a sufficiently charitable and honest man. He died a Catholic, and very probably without ever having prophesied in the terms mentioned by Beza.

It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge, where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the missionary encountered Louis du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of Paris and secretary of Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux. Louis possessed a beautiful dwelling at Claix, a sort of Thebais, retired and pleasant, where Calvin commenced his most serious work, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_. The time he could spare from this literary occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and especially at Angouleme. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine." He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded, continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the temple of St. Peter. He left the court of Margaret and reappeared at Orleans.

The Reformation in France, as in Germany, wherever it showed itself, produced, on all sides, disorder and trouble. In place of a uniform symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to interminable disputes. In Germany the Lutheran word caused a thousand sects to spring up--each of which wished to establish a Christian republic on the ruins of Catholicism. Carlstadt, Schwenkfield, Oecolampadius, Zwingli, Munzer, Boskold, begotten by Luther, had denied their father, and taught heterogeneous dogmas, of which every one passed for the production of the Holy Ghost. Luther, who no longer concealed himself beneath a monk's robe, but borrowed the ducal sword, drove before him all these rebel angels, and, at the gate of Wittenberg, stationed an executioner to prohibit their entrance; driven back into the provinces, the dissenters appealed to open force. Germany was then inundated with the blood of her noble intelligences, who had been born for her glory.

Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment, denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith. Everything was perishing--painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood.

In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin's book, _de Clementia_, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks--all the signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world, avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and charity.

To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God. These doctors all carried with them the same book--the Bible.

Servetus,[43] a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had published different treatises against the Trinity. He had disputed at Basel with Oecolampadius, some time before this renegade from the Lutheran faith "was strangled by the devil," if we are to believe the account given by Doctor Martin Luther. Servetus boasted that he triumphed over the theologian. Having left Basel in 1532, and crossed the Rhine, he came to hurl a solemn defiance at Calvin; the gauntlet was taken up by the _cure_ of Pont l'Eveque, the place of combat indicated, the day for the tournament named, but at the appointed hour "the heart of this unhappy wretch failed," says Beza, "who having agreed to dispute, did not dare appear." Calvin, on his part--in his refutations of the errors of Servetus, published in 1554--boasts of having in vain offered the Spanish physician remedies suitable to cure his malady. Servetus pretends that his adversary was laying snares for him, which he had the good-fortune to avoid. At a later period he forgot his part, and came to throw himself into the ambuscade of his enemy.

The parliaments redoubled their severity: Calvin was narrowly watched, his liberty might be compromised, and even his life put in peril. He resolved to abandon France, either from fear or spite--if we are to credit an ecclesiastical historian--not being able to forgive Francis I for the preference manifested by this Prince toward a relation of the Constable, "of moderate circumstances," who was promoted to a benefice, for which the author of the _Commentary on Seneca_ had condescended to make solicitation. The testimony of the historian is weighty. Soulier knows neither hatred, passion, nor anger; he seeks after the truth, and he believes that he has found it in the recital which we are about to peruse.

"We, the undersigned--Louis Charreton, counsellor of the King, dean of the presidents of the parliaments of Paris, son of the late Andrew Charreton, who was first Baron of Champagne, and counsellor to the high chamber of the Parliament of Paris; Madam Antoinette Charreton, widow of Noel Renouard, former master in the chamber of the courts of Paris, and daughter of the late Hugh Charreton, Lord of Montauzon; and John Charreton, Sieur de la Terriere; all three cousins, and grandchildren of Hugh Charreton--certify that we have frequently heard from our fathers that the aforesaid Sieur Hugh Charreton had several times told them that under the reign of Francis I, while the court was at Fontainebleau, Calvin, who had a benefice at Noyon, came there and took lodgings in the hotel where the aforesaid Sieur Charreton was lodging, who, understanding that Calvin was a man of letters and of great erudition, and being very fond of the society of learned men, informed him that he would be delighted to have some interviews with him; to this Calvin the more willingly consented under the belief that the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton might be able to assist him in the affair which had brought him to Fontainebleau; that after several interviews the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton demanded from Calvin the object of his journey, to which he answered that he had come to solicit a priory from the King, for which there was but one rival, who was a relative of the Constable.

"The Sieur de Charreton asked him if he thought this nothing. He replied that he was aware of the high consideration enjoyed by the Constable, but he also knew that the King, in disposing of benefices, was wont to choose the most proper persons, and that the relative of the Constable was of very poor capacity. To which the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton rejoined that this was no obstacle, since no great capacity was needed to hold a simple benefice; whereupon Calvin exclaimed and cried out that if such wrong was done him he would find means to make them speak of him for five hundred years; and the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton having urged him strongly to tell him how he would do this, Calvin conducted him to his room and showed him the commencement of his _Institutes_; and after having read a portion of them, Calvin demanded his opinion; he answered _that it was poison well put in sugar_, and advised him not to continue a work which was only a false interpretation of the Scriptures and of everything which the holy fathers had written; and as he perceived that Calvin remained firm in his wicked purpose, he gave notice thereof to the Constable, who declared that Calvin was a fool and should soon be brought to his senses. But two days after, the benefice having been bestowed on the relative of the Constable, Calvin departed and began to propagate his sect, which, being very convenient, was embraced by many persons, some through libertinism, others from weakness of mind.

"That some time after, the Constable was going to his government of Languedoc, and passed through Lyons, where the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton paid him a visit, and was asked if he did not belong to the sect of Calvin, with whom he had lodged. He answered that he would be very sorry to embrace a religion the father and founder of which he had seen born.

"In testimony whereof we have given our signatures, at Paris, this 20th of September, 1682.

"Signed: Charreton, President; A. Charreton, Widow Renouard; and Charreton de la Terriere."

After having published his _Psychopannychia_, in 1534, at Orleans, Calvin left that city. He felt a desire to visit Basel, at that time the Athens of Switzerland, a city of renown, so long the abode of Erasmus, famous for its _literati_, its celebrated printers, and its theologians amorous of novelties; where Froben had published his fine edition of the works of St. Jerome; where Holbein had painted his picture of Christ ready for the sepulchre, where Capito taught Hebrew, and Oecolampadius commented on the Psalms.

He set out from Orleans in company with his friend Du Tillet; near Metz their domestic robbed them and fled with their sacks and valises, and they were forced to seek Strasburg on foot, nearly destitute of clothing, and with but ten crowns in their pockets. Calvin spent some time in Strasburg, studying the different transformations which the reformed gospel had undergone during the brief space of fifteen years. He entered into intimate relations with some of the most celebrated representatives of Protestantism. Anyone else, who had arrived there free from prejudices against Catholicism, would have found salutary instruction in the ceaseless agitations of that city, which knew not where to poise itself in order to find repose, and which, since 1521, had become Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian, and, at that very moment, was dreaming of a new transfiguration, to be accomplished by the aid of Bucer, one of its new guests.

At Basel, Calvin found Simon Grynaeus and Erasmus. Calvin could not neglect this opportunity of visiting the Batavian philologist, whose fame was European. After a short interview they separated. Bucer, who had assisted at the meeting, was solicitous to know the opinion of the caustic old man. "Master," said he, "what think you of the new-comer?" Erasmus smiled, without answering. Bucer insisted. "I behold," said the author of the _Colloquies_, "a great pest, which is springing up in the Church, against the Church."

On the next day Du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of Paris, arrived at Basel and, by dint of tears and entreaties, brought with him his brother Louis, who repented, made his abjuration, and was shortly after elected archdeacon, a dignity disputed with him by Renaudie, who was to be used by the Reformation for the execution of the plot of Amboise.

The _Psychopannychia_, the first controversial work of Calvin, is a pamphlet directed against the sect of Anabaptists, whom the bloody day of Frankenhausen had conquered, but not subdued. The spirit of Munzer lived again in his disciples, who were parading their mystic reveries through Holland, Flanders, and France. Luther had essayed his powers against Munzer, imagining that by his fiery language, his Pindaric wrath, his flames and thunders, he would soon overwhelm the chief of the miners, as he had defeated, it is said, those theological dwarfs who were unable to stand before him. From the summit of the mountain he had appeared to Munzer in the midst of lightnings, but those lightnings did not alarm his adversary, who was bold enough to face him with unquailing eye.

Munzer also possessed a fiery tongue, which he used with admirable skill, to inflame and arouse the peasants; this time victory remained with the man of the sledge-hammer. And Luther, who wished to terminate the affair at any cost, was reduced, as is well known, to avail himself of the sword of one of his electors. The wrecks which escaped from the funeral obsequies of Thuringia took refuge in a new land. France received and listened to the prophets of Anabaptism.

These Anabaptists maintained seducing doctrines. They dreamed of a sort of Jerusalem, very different from the Jewish Jerusalem; a Jerusalem quite spiritual, without swords, soldiers, or civil magistracy: the true city of the elect. Their speech was infected with Pelagianism and Arianism; on several points of dogma they agreed with Catholics--on predestination, for example, and on the merit of works. Some of them taught the sleep of the soul till the day of judgment. It was against these "sleepers" that Calvin determined to measure himself.

The _Commentary on Seneca_ is a philological work, a book of the revival, a rhetorical declamation, in which Calvin is evidently aspiring to a place among the humanists, and making his court, in sufficiently fine Latin, to all the Ciceronians of the age: this was bringing himself forward with skill and tact. The Latin language was the idiom of the Church, of the convents, colleges, universities, and parliaments. The _Psychopannychia_ is a religious pamphlet, and now Calvin must expect a rival in the first pamphleteer of Germany, Luther himself. It is certain that Calvin was acquainted with the writings of the Saxon monk against Eck, Tetzel, Prierias, Latomus, and the Sorbonnists. He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond the Rhine.

Nor had he at his service those German smoking-houses, where, of an evening, among the companions of gay science, his weary mind might have revived its energies. In France the monks did not resort to taverns. Calvin was, therefore, everything he was destined to become: an adroit, biting disputant, ready at retort, but without warmth or enthusiasm. He loves to bear testimony in his own behalf, that "he did not indulge his wrath, except modestly; that he always made it a rule to set aside outrageous or biting expressions; that he almost always moderated his style, which was better adapted to instruct than to drive forcibly, in such sort, however, that it may ever attract those who would not be led." One must see that, with such humor and style, Calvin might have died forgotten, in some little benefice of Swabia, and that he was never formed for raising storms, but only for using them.

At this epoch the grand agitator of society was first, society itself, and then Luther, that great pamphleteer, "whose books are quite full of demons," who drove humanity into the paths of a revolution, for which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. Not that the latter does not sometimes rise even to wrath, but it is a wrath which savors of labor and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides, he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the delicate ears of some. But, as I am aware there are some good persons who have conceived such affection for this dream of the sleep of souls, I would not have them offended with me." Where Calvin is concerned we must not allow our admiration to be too easily awaked; we must note that he is speaking of an Anabaptist, that is, of a soul which has thrown off the "papism." But let a Catholic appear--a priest unknown to fame, who, as editor, shall have reprinted a new edition of the work of Henry VIII, "_Assertio Septem Sacramentorum_"--for instance, Gabriel de Sacconay, precentor of Lyons, and you shall then behold Calvin, under the form of a dithyrambic or congratulatory epistle, without the least regard for delicate ears, throw into the face of the Catholic the most filthy expressions of offence.

Calvin has himself given a correct estimate of the value of his _Psychopannychia_, and of his treatise against the Anabaptists, which one of his historians desires to have reprinted in our time, purged of all its bitterness of style. He was right in saying, "I have reproved the foolish curiosity of those who were debating these questions, which, in fact, are but vexations of mind."

One day this question, about the sleep of souls--one that in the ancient Church had long since been examined, by Metito--was presented to Luther, who disposed of it in few words. "These," said he, "are picked nutshells."

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Michael Servetus was a controversialist in matters of philosophy and religion. For many years he was the object of attack by the different orthodox schools on account of his heretical speeches and writings. In 1553 he published a work which led to his arrest by order of the inquisitor-general at Lyons. Servetus escaped, but was again taken, at the instance of Calvin, and was burned at Geneva, October 27, 1553.--ED.

ENGLAND BREAKS WITH THE ROMAN CHURCH

DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTERIES

A.D. 1534

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Following the fall of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More became lord
chancellor of England, but the real power of Wolsey passed
to another and perhaps even more able minister, Thomas
Cromwell. Henry VIII needed always some strong, able, crafty
guide to show him a path through the intricacies of European
politics, and enable him at the same time to follow the
savage dictates of his passion and his whims.

Such a helper he found now in Cromwell. Few men have ever
been so daring or so ruthless as this great statesman. He
helped Henry in all his evil schemes, though Green and other
critics as well have thought to discern a larger, wiser
policy in the impenetrable mind of the subtle minister. As
secretary of state he drove England at his own pace through
the vast religious changes of the period. For the ruin he
brought upon Catholicism, and more especially for his
destruction of the thousand monasteries that dotted England,
he has been called the "hammer of the monks." Of even lower
birth than Wolsey, and rising to almost equal power,
Cromwell began life as a son of a blacksmith.

He wandered over Europe and especially Italy as a soldier,
merchant, and general adventurer of the lower and wilder
type. He became Wolsey's right-hand man, and held loyally by
his chief even after the latter's overthrow.

It had been Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, and the
resulting necessity for divorce from his wife Catherine,
that caused Wolsey's fall. On the same passion did Cromwell
build his rise. He secretly urged the King to break with
Rome entirely and declare himself sole head of the English
Church. Thus he could divorce himself. Henry first tried a
last negotiation with the Pope; that failing, he turned to
his new adviser.

Cromwell was again ready with his suggestion that the King should disavow the papal jurisdiction, declare himself head of the Church within its realm, and obtain a divorce from his own ecclesiastical courts. But the new minister looked on the divorce as simply the prelude to a series of changes which he was bent upon accomplishing. In all his checkered life, that had left its deepest stamp on him in Italy. Not only in the rapidity and ruthlessness of his designs, but in their larger scope, their admirable combination, the Italian statecraft entered with Cromwell into English politics. He is in fact the first English minister in whom we can trace through the whole period of his rule the steady working out of a great and definite aim, that of raising the King to absolute authority on the ruins of every rival power within his realm.

It was not that Cromwell was a mere slave of tyranny. Whether we may trust the tale that carries him in his youth to Florence or not, his statesmanship was closely modelled on the ideal of the Florentine thinker whose book was constantly in his hand. Even as a servant of Wolsey he startled the future Cardinal, Reginald Pole, by bidding him take for his manual in politics the _Prince_ of Machiavelli. Machiavelli hoped to find in Caesar Borgia or in the later Lorenzo de' Medici a tyrant who, after crushing all rival tyrannies, might unite and regenerate Italy; and, terrible and ruthless as his policy was, the final aim of Cromwell seems to have been that of Machiavelli, an aim of securing enlightenment and order for England by the concentration of all authority in the Crown.

The first step toward such an end was the freeing the monarchy from its spiritual obedience to Rome. What the first of the Tudors had done for the political independence of the kingdom, the second was to do for its ecclesiastical independence. Henry VII had freed England from the interference of France or the house of Burgundy; and in the question of the divorce Cromwell saw the means of bringing Henry VIII to free it from the interference of the papacy. In such an effort resistance could be looked for only from the clergy. But their resistance was what Cromwell desired. The last check on royal absolutism which had survived the Wars of the Roses lay in the wealth, the independent synods and jurisdiction, and the religious claims of the Church; and for the success of the new policy it was necessary to reduce the great ecclesiastical body to a mere department of the state in which all authority should flow from the sovereign alone, his will be the only law, his decision the only test of truth.

Such a change, however, was hardly to be wrought without a struggle; and the question of national independence in all ecclesiastical matters furnished ground on which the Crown could conduct this struggle to the best advantage. The secretary's first blow showed how unscrupulously the struggle was to be waged. A year had passed since Wolsey had been convicted of a breach of the Statute of Provisors. The pedantry of the judges declared the whole nation to have been formally involved in the same charge by its acceptance of his authority. The legal absurdity was now redressed by a general pardon, but from this pardon the clergy found themselves omitted. In the spring of 1531 a convocation was assembled to be told that forgiveness could be bought at no less a price than the payment of a fine amounting to a million of our present money, and the acknowledgment of the King as "the chief protector, the only and supreme lord, and head of the Church and clergy of England."

Unjust as was the first demand, they at once submitted to it; against the second they struggled hard. But their appeals to Henry and Cromwell met only with demands for instant obedience. A compromise was at last arrived at by the insertion of a qualifying phrase, "So far as the law of Christ will allow"; and with this addition the words were again submitted by Warham to the convocation. There was a general silence. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," said the Archbishop. "Then are we all silent," replied a voice from among the crowd.

There is no ground for thinking that the "headship of the Church" which Henry claimed in this submission was more than a warning addressed to the independent spirit of the clergy, or that it bore as yet the meaning which was afterward attached to it. It certainly implied no independence of Rome, for negotiations were still being carried on with the papal court. But it told Clement plainly that in any strife that might come between himself and Henry the clergy were in the King's hand, and that he must look for no aid from them in any struggle with the Crown. The warning was backed by an address to the Pope from the lords and some of the commons who assembled after a fresh prorogation of the houses in the spring.

"The cause of his majesty," the peers were made to say, "is the cause of each of ourselves." They laid before the Pope what they represented as the judgment of the universities in favor of the divorce; but they faced boldly the event of its rejection. "Our condition," they ended, "will not be wholly irremediable. Extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by all means be rid of his distemper." In the summer the banishment of Catherine from the King's palace to a house at Ampthill showed the firmness of Henry's resolve. Each of these acts was no doubt intended to tell on the Pope's decision, for Henry still clung to the hope of extorting from Clement a favorable answer; and at the close of the year a fresh embassy, with Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, at its head, was despatched to the papal court. But the embassy failed like its predecessors, and at the opening of 1532 Cromwell was free to take more decisive steps in the course on which he had entered.

What the nature of his policy was to be, had already been detected by eyes as keen as his own. More had seen in Wolsey's fall an opening for the realization of those schemes of religious and even of political reform on which the scholars of the New Learning had long been brooding. The substitution of the lords of the council for the autocratic rule of the cardinal-minister, the break-up of the great mass of powers which had been gathered into a single hand, the summons of a parliament, the ecclesiastical reforms which it at once sanctioned, were measures which promised a more legal and constitutional system of government. The question of the divorce presented to More no serious difficulty. Untenable as Henry's claim seemed to the new Chancellor, his faith in the omnipotence of parliament would have enabled him to submit to any statute which named a new spouse as queen and her children as heirs to the crown. But as Cromwell's policy unfolded itself he saw that more than this was impending.

The Catholic instinct of his mind, the dread of a rent Christendom and of the wars and bigotry that must come of its rending, united with More's theological convictions to resist any spiritual severance of England from the papacy. His love for freedom, his revolt against the growing autocracy of the Crown, the very height and grandeur of his own spiritual convictions, all bent him to withstand a system which would concentrate in the king the whole power of church as of state, would leave him without the one check that remained on his despotism, and make him arbiter of the religious faith of his subjects. The later revolt of the Puritans against the king-worship which Cromwell established proved the justice of the provision which forced More in the spring of 1532 to resign the post of chancellor.

But the revolution from which he shrank was an inevitable one. Till now every Englishman had practically owned a double life and a double allegiance. As citizen of a temporal state his life was bounded by English shores, and his loyalty due exclusively to his English King. But as citizen of the state spiritual, he belonged not to England, but to Christendom. The law which governed him was not a national law, but a law that embraced every European nation, and the ordinary course of judicial appeals in ecclesiastical cases proved to him that the sovereignty in all matters of conscience or religion lay, not at Westminster, but at Rome.

Such a distinction could scarcely fail to bring embarrassment with it as the sense of national life and national pride waxed stronger; and from the reign of the Edwards the problem of reconciling the spiritual and temporal relations of the realm grew daily more difficult. Parliament had hardly risen into life when it became the organ of the national jealousy, whether of any papal jurisdiction without the realm or of the separate life and separate jurisdiction of the clergy within it. The movement was long arrested by religious reaction and civil war. But the fresh sense of national greatness which sprang from the policy of Henry VIII, the fresh sense of national unity as the monarchy gathered all power into its single hand, would have itself revived the contest even without the spur of the divorce.

What the question of the divorce really did was to stimulate the movement by bringing into clearer view the wreck of the great Christian commonwealth of which England had till now formed a part, and the impossibility of any real exercise of a spiritual sovereignty over it by the weakened papacy, as well as by outraging the national pride through the summons of the King to a foreign bar and the submission of English interests to the will of a foreign emperor.

With such a spur as this the movement, which More dreaded, moved forward as quickly as Cromwell desired. The time had come when England was to claim for herself the fulness of power, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, within her bounds; and, in the concentration of all authority within the hands of the sovereign which was the political characteristic of the time, to claim this power for the nation was to claim it for the king. The import of that headship of the Church which Henry had assumed in the preceding year was brought fully out in one of the propositions laid before the convocation of 1532.

"The King's majesty," runs this memorable clause, "hath as well the care of the souls of his subjects as their bodies; and may by the law of God by his parliament make laws touching and concerning as well the one as the other." The principle embodied in these words was carried out in a series of decisive measures. Under strong pressure the convocation was brought to pray that the power of independent legislation till now exercised by the church should come to an end, and to promise "that from henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put into execution any such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time coming, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to make, promulge, and execute them, and the same so made be approved by your highness' authority."

Rome was dealt with in the same unsparing fashion. The parliament forbade by statute any further appeals to the papal court; and on a petition from the clergy in convocation the houses granted power to the King to suspend the payments of first-fruits, or the year's revenue which each bishop paid to Rome on his election to a see. All judicial, all financial connection with the papacy was broken by these two measures. The last, indeed, was as yet but a menace which Henry might use in his negotiations with Clement. The hope which had been entertained of aid from Charles was now abandoned; and the overthrow of Norfolk and his policy of alliance with the Empire was seen at the midsummer of 1532 in the conclusion of a league with France. Cromwell had fallen back on Wolsey's system; and the divorce was now to be looked for from the united pressure of the French and English kings on the papal court.

But the pressure was as unsuccessful as before. In November Clement threatened the King with excommunication if he did not restore Catherine to her place as queen and abstain from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn till the case was tried. But Henry still refused to submit to the judgment of any court outside his realm; and the Pope, ready as he was with evasion and delay, dared not alienate Charles by consenting to a trial within it. The lavish pledges which Francis had given in an interview during the preceding summer may have aided to spur the King to a decisive step which closed the long debate. At the opening of 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn. The match, however, was carefully kept secret while the papal sanction was being gained for the appointment of Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, which had become vacant by Archbishop Warham's death in the preceding year. But Cranmer's consecration at the close of March was the signal for more open action, and Cromwell's policy was at last brought fairly into play.

The new primate at once laid the question of the King's marriage before the two houses of convocation, and both voted that the license of Pope Julius had been beyond the papal powers and that the marriage which it authorized was void. In May the King's suit was brought before the Archbishop in his court at Dunstable; his judgment annulled the marriage with Catherine as void from the beginning, and pronounced the marriage with Anne Boleyn, which her pregnancy had forced Henry to reveal, a lawful marriage. A week later the hand of Cranmer placed upon Anne's brow the crown which she had coveted so long.

"There was much murmuring" at measures such as these. Many thought "that the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen, and that the Emperor and he would destroy all the people." Fears of the overthrow of religion told on the clergy; the merchants dreaded an interruption of the trade with Flanders, Italy, and Spain. But Charles, though still loyal to his aunt's cause, had no mind to incur risks for her; and Clement, though he annulled Cranmer's proceedings, hesitated as yet to take sterner action. Henry, on the other hand, conscious that the die was thrown, moved rapidly forward in the path that Cromwell had opened. The Pope's reversal of the primate's judgment was answered by an appeal to a general council. The decision of the cardinals to whom the case was referred in the spring of 1534, a decision which asserted the lawfulness of Catherine's marriage, was met by the enforcement of the long-suspended statute forbidding the payment of first-fruits to the Pope.