Chapter VIII: The Inquisition in France

Martyrs in France--Francis I., a persecutor--His mother, Louisa,
establishes the Inquisition--Early victims--Francis pursues her
policy--His processions and victims--His horrid death--Increase of
Protestants--Charles IX.--Massacre--Edict of Nantes--Its
revocation--Barbarities of dragoons.

France supplied a large number of victims to the cruel bigotry of the Inquisition, at the period of the reformation, especially in the reign of Francis I. This great monarch was nephew to Louis XII., whom he succeeded on the throne at his death, January 21, 1515. Francis was then twenty-one years of age; and no sooner was he seated on the throne than he resolved on an expedition into Italy, in which he was successful. After the battle of Marignan, in which he was victorious, Francis entered Milan, October 23, 1515; and shortly after concluded a peace with Pope Leo X., by which he was confirmed in many privileges, he and the Pope making various concessions. Leo and Francis met at Bologna, where they drew up a treaty, known as the “_The Concordat_,” in virtue of which they agreed to sacrifice what were understood as the rights of the church, mutually sharing the spoils. The king conceded to the Pope his supremacy, independent of all councils of the church, while Leo despoiled the ecclesiastical corporations of France of the power to nominate to the bishoprics, bestowing this patronage upon the monarch. This treaty was ratified by the Pope making a public procession to the cathedral at Bologna, the king bearing the train of His Holiness! Francis felt conscious of the iniquitous character of the _Concordat_; and, turning to Duprat, his chancellor, whispered, “there is enough in it to damn us both!”

Francis and Leo having thus linked their interests together, separated, each to pursue his own course: but the king having afterwards been irritated by some delays of the Pope, complained to the papal legate of the conduct of Leo; adding, that if he were not speedily satisfied, he would countenance the Lutherans in his kingdom. The priestly ambassador replied in a manner that silenced the high-spirited monarch. “Sire,” said he, “you would be the first and greatest loser by such a step--a new religion demands a new prince!” By this means Francis was prepared, under the influence of superstition and fear for his crown, to show the most ardent zeal for the cause of the Pope and his Inquisition.

Two ladies, at this period, exercised extraordinary influence in religion in France. Margaret, the duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis, entertained opinions far different from those of the king; and she afforded her powerful protection to the reformers, who increased in several parts of France, especially at Meaux and Lyons. Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis, professedly a Roman Catholic, but in reality a woman of no religious principle, was made regent of the kingdom, while he carried his arms into Italy, in 1524. He was, at first, successful; but, being eager to take Pavia, he was defeated near that city by the imperial forces, and taken prisoner by Lannoy, vice-king of Naples.

Francis I. became a captive in the power of the Emperor Charles V., and was carried a prisoner into Spain. During his absence the terrors of the Inquisition were felt in France. For, no sooner had Louisa obtained possession of the reins of government, by the captivity of the king, her son, than she wrote to the Pope, as the means of conciliating his favour, asking his advice as to the best mode of dealing with the heretics that infested France. Clement VII., exasperated by the failure of every attempt to arrest the progress of the reformation in Germany and Switzerland, was delighted with the message which laid the heretics throughout the “Most Christian kingdom of France” at the mercy of the sovereign pontiff. He responded with practical effect; and, by a papal bull, established the Inquisition in France.

For the purpose of carrying out his policy, the Pope appointed Chancellor Duprat to be archbishop of Sens, and created him a cardinal. Thus the Inquisition was, at once, constituted in France, as all the influential powers,--the regent, the chancellor, and the parliament,--were leagued with the Pope and the Sorbonne, to exterminate heresy with fire and sword. A commission was appointed, consisting of four priests, to whom was entrusted absolute power to proceed against all persons suspected of being tainted with Lutheran doctrines. The highest dignitaries were held responsible to this dread tribunal; and the first victim of the inquisitors was Briconnet, count of Montbrun, bishop of Meaux. He was compelled to answer, like the humblest priest, before two of the inquisitors, and every appeal that he attempted to make to the parliament, or to the regent, was rejected. He recanted the evangelical doctrines that he had preached; and Lefevre, an aged professor in the university, “the forerunner of the reformation,” fled to Strasburgh. But neither the fall of the bishop, nor the flight of the doctor, could satisfy the inquisitors of Paris. Jean Pavanne was burned at the stake in the Place de Grève, rejoicing that he was counted worthy to suffer death for Christ. Their next victim was “the good hermit of Livry.” As he had evangelised the villagers around his dwelling, about nine miles from Paris, it was resolved to make him a public example. A vast pile was raised in the open area in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in which this servant of Christ was sacrificed, in the presence of the whole of the clergy, and a multitude of the people, who had been called together by the great bell of the cathedral. To such humble victims others were added of higher rank, and by other means than the prison and the stake. Michael D’Arande, chaplain to the Princess Margaret, was threatened with death, and Anthony Papillon, chief master of requests to the Dauphin, was carried off by poison. The inquisitors, in a few months, had committed to the flames, or driven from France, nearly every individual who had been the object of their envy or suspicion. At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to the inquisitors of Rome.

Francis returned to Paris in the character of a doubly perjured vassal of the Pope, bound to assume the office of the persecutor, and take the lead in devoting to tortures and to death the most virtuous, enlightened and faithful of his subjects. The great change which had taken place in the temper of Francis on his return from Spain, became remarkably manifest on his delivering up Louis Berquin, called “the most learned of the nobility,” to the vengeance of the inquisitors. His books were seized, and, in order to strike at the root of the heresy, Luther’s writings were publicly burnt before the cathedral of Notre Dame. Berquin remained faithful; he refused to purchase life by the sacrifice of his faith; and Francis ceased to be protector and king. When the parliament interfered with his early schemes of policy, his haughty reply had been, “There is a king in France;” and when the court, responding to the proud spirit of the sovereign, interfered on the former arrest of Berquin, the king exclaimed, “Of what is he accused? Of challenging the custom of invoking the Virgin in place of the Holy Ghost! _Is it for such trifles that they imprison a king’s officer?_ It is an attack, aimed at literature, true religion, the nobility, nay, the crown itself.” But Francis had descended from this kingly standing to become the wretched tool of a bigoted priesthood. Berquin, the “king’s officer,” was abandoned to his enemies. He was condemned to have his tongue pierced and _to be burnt alive_; and the sentence was executed with the most merciless severity. Berquin held fast his faith; and his execution was followed by that of fourteen other reformers, who were burnt at the stake, maintaining, to their latest breath, the true faith of Christ.

Francis not only allowed a free course to the inquisitors, and abandoned the nobles of France to their fury, he was drawn to be their humble agent among the executioners of their cruelties. At the beginning of 1535, Jean Morin, the _surintendant-criminel_, flung into prison immense numbers of men, women, and children, who attended the religious meetings of the evangelicals. They were betrayed by a man named Guainier, who had been employed to keep watch at their secret religious assemblies. These furnished victims for a solemn procession, which the king ordered at Paris, January 21, 1535, in expiation of the offence pretended to have been committed in certain placards, which denied the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation.

Laval, in his “History of the Protestant Reformation in France,” describes this procession, thus expressed by a modern writer:--“Between the hours of eight and nine in the morning the procession began to issue from the church of Saint Geneviéve. There was a long line of priests, dressed in their gorgeous garments; the streets were strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with spectators. First were borne the bodies and relics of all the martyrs preserved in the different churches of Paris,--St. Germain, St. Merry, St. Marceau, St. Geneviéve, St. Opportune, St. Landré, St. Honoré; and all those relics of the Holy Chapel which had never been exposed to the public gaze since the grand and mournful day of the funeral of Saint Louis. Then followed a great number of cardinals in their scarlet robes; of bishops, abbés, and other prelates, and all the members of the University of Paris, marching in regular order. Then came Du Bellay, bishop of Paris, carrying in his hands the holy sacrament. Then the king, with his head bare, and bearing a large waxen taper in his hand; then the queen; the princes of the blood; two hundred gentlemen; the king’s guard; the court of parliament; the master of requests, and all the officers of justice. The ambassadors of the emperor, of England, of Venice, &c., were present. The procession, in grave order, proceeded through all the larger streets of Paris; and at _six_ principal places there were erected at each a _reposoir_, or temporary altar, adorned with flowers, crucifixes, candlesticks, &c., &c. Little children, dressed as angels, or holding the lamb of peace, are usually to be seen at these reposoirs; but here was now a terrible spectacle prepared. At each altar a scaffold and a pile had been arranged, where were very cruelly burned _six people_, amid the marvellous shouts and rejoicings of the populace, so highly excited, that it was with difficulty they were prevented from snatching the victims out of the hands of the executioners and tearing them in pieces. But if the fury of these was great, the constancy of the martyrs was greater still. The cruelty of the people, in tearing these sufferers to atoms, would have been mercy, compared to the barbarity of the king. He had commanded that these victims should be fastened to a very lofty machine, the beam of which projecting, was, by means of pulleys, raised and lowered alternately; and as it rose and fell it plunged the martyr into a blazing pile below, and raised him up again in order to prolong his sufferings. This continued till the flames had destroyed the cords which bound him, and the body sank into the fire. This horrible machine was not set in motion till the king, queen, and all present might enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the heretic tormented with the flames; during which time the king, handing his torch to the Cardinal de Loraine, joined his hands, and prostrating himself humbly, called down the blessing of heaven upon his people; and in this attitude remained until the agonies of the victim had terminated.

“The procession ended where it began, at the church of St. Geneviéve. The holy sacrament was replaced in the tabernacle, and the mass was sung by the archbishop of Paris. After this there was a splendid dinner, at which the archbishop received the king, the peers, the ambassadors, the courts of parliament, &c., &c. At the conclusion of which entertainment, the king, addressing the numerous guests, after expressing his grief at the execrable opinions that were disseminated in his dominions, said ‘that he had determined and commanded that the most rigorous punishment should be inflicted upon the delinquents; and he required all his subjects to denounce every one whom they should know to be adherents unto, or accomplices in such blasphemies, without regard to alliance, lineage, or friendship. As for himself, _if his very arm were thus corrupted, he would tear it from his body; and if his own children were found guilty of falling into such enormities, he would at once yield them up as a first sacrifice to God_!’ To give force to his words, the king ordered the executions of the _sacramentaries_ to continue; and from that time the numbers who perished by the _balançoire_ (or swing) is appalling.”

Europe was filled with the reports of these cruelties on the French reformers, and the Protestant princes remonstrated with the king. But Francis had become the slave of superstition and priestly intolerance, and governed by the inquisitors of Rome. He continued his cruel and impolitic course, under the counsel of the inquisitors; and issued a terrible edict, in 1540, against the Vaudois, requiring “that the villages of Mirandol, Cabrieres, Les Aignes, and other places shall all be destroyed, the houses razed to the ground; their caverns and other subterranean retreats demolished; their forests cut down; their fruit trees torn up by the roots; the principal chiefs executed; and the women and children exiled for perpetuity.”

These people were reported as exemplary in their industry; that “they never say mass for the dead; they have prayer in the vulgar tongue; they have no bishops, nor priests, but men whom they elect as simple ministers.” The Papists, therefore, hated their religion, and envied their prosperity, resulting from industry; so that they prevailed on the king to abandon his deserving subjects to the exterminating sword and fire of the inquisitors. Men, women, and children were massacred with fiendish cruelty. Towns, villages, and hamlets were devoted to the flames. Death was threatened to all who should offer food or shelter to the fugitives, so that those who escaped the sword of the persecutors, perished in the mountains.

Francis is said to have been stung with remorse on reflecting upon this infamous massacre, especially on his death-bed. He died in 1547, as the persecutor dies,--despairing, dishonoured, and undeplored. His eldest son, the dauphin, died of poison, administered by his cup-bearer; and his own death is believed to have been caused by the same instrument of revenge, administered by the husband of a lady whom he had dishonoured. His character, therefore, was worthy of “the mystery of iniquity,” the Romish Antichrist.

France exhibited a long series of the most bloody scenes, after the decease of Francis I., the horrid fruit of the Inquisition, the detail of which would require a volume. Notwithstanding persecution, the Protestants increased greatly; so that, in 1570, it is recorded, there were _two thousand one hundred and fifty_ congregations of Protestants in France, some of them containing _two thousand_ members! Papal intrigues were long employed, under the direction of the inquisitors, for their extirpation; and the pages of history do not contain such another record of monstrous treachery and malignant barbarity, as that of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It is to be remembered that the deed was perpetrated in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace!

Charles IX., king of France, guided by his wicked mother, the infamous Catherine de Medicis, was induced, by the agents of the Pope, to resolve upon exterminating, by one decisive effort, all the dissenters from the Romish church. For this purpose, many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, to celebrate the marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was destroyed before the marriage was solemnised, by means of poison, concealed in a pair of gloves. The inhuman butchery commenced at the tolling of the bell of the Palais de Justice, at two o’clock in the morning of the 24th of August (the Sabbath), by the murder of the Admiral Coligny, who had been shot at and wounded two days previously. The hypocritical king of France visited him, and declared the admiral’s wound was his own. But the shocking work was conducted by the Duke of Guise, urged on by the king himself in person!

Most dreadful was the scene. The shrieks of women and children rent the air, mingled with the shouts and blasphemous execrations of their murderers. “Imagine,” says a French author, “sixty thousand assassins, armed with pistols, stakes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other deadly weapons, rushing along the streets, blaspheming and abusing the sacred name of God, and murdering and mutilating the innocent and defenceless, amid a horrible tempest of yells and savage cries, and the piteous shrieks of those whom they dragged through the mire, or flung headlong into the bloody Seine!” _Five hundred_ gentlemen, and _ten thousand_ of the common people are believed to have been sacrificed in this horrid massacre, in three days, within the walls of Paris alone. But the bloody work extended to all places where these evangelical dissenters were known; and it is calculated that not less than _a hundred thousand_ Protestants were at this time destroyed in France!

On the third day of the massacre, the priests led the king in royal state to the cathedral of Notre Dame, when high mass was performed; and then solemn thanksgivings to God were rendered, as for the victory which he had thus granted over the enemies of the church! This melancholy tragedy was known to have been contrived by the Romish inquisitors. The announcement of it was received by the clergy, at Rome and in Spain, with expressions of unbounded exultation. The messenger who brought the news to Rome was rewarded with a thousand crowns; and when the letters from the papal legate residing at the French court were read in the assembly of cardinals, it was decreed, that the Pope should march with his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, to offer solemn thanks to God for so signal a blessing conferred upon the see of Rome! Medals to commemorate this horrid deed were struck in Paris and in Rome, by order of the Governments; and that of Pope Gregory XIII., though proclaiming the everlasting dishonour of the papacy and the Inquisition, may still be obtained at the mint of Rome!

Charles IX. raged in savage cruelty against the Protestants. Even the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were devoted to the same destruction; but their lives were spared on their professing to be reconciled to the Romish church; the king of France, with a terrible oath, proposing to them, “mass, death, or the Bastile for life!” This royal bigot, however, fell a victim to guilt and remorse; for he died, May 30th, 1574, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, after suffering dreadful bodily and mental anguish, poisoned, as many believed, by the hand of his own mother!

As to the sacrifices of the Protestants in France, it is collected from authentic records that during _forty_ years, in the middle of this century, not less than _a million_ were the victims of the unrelenting bigotry of the Romish inquisitors!

Protestantism still survived in France; and many again took up arms in their own defence, until 1598, when Henry IV., of Navarre, succeeded to the throne. He granted the famous “Edict of Nantes,” which was called “Irrevocable!” and by which the Protestants were allowed liberty of conscience, the free exercise of their religion, and access to all places of public trust and dignity. But the Papists continued by all kinds of intrigues to annoy them. One shameful invasion of their rights succeeded another, by the enactment of inhuman laws, until the reign of Louis XIV., who was prevailed on, in 1685, by the Popish bishops and the Jesuits, contrary to the most solemn obligations which human or divine laws can frame, to revoke the “Irrevocable Edict of Nantes.”

By this means it was intended, in one grand effort, to extirpate the very remembrance of the Protestant profession in France. Reconciliation with Rome was required, or banishment from the kingdom. Fifteen days were allowed to the preachers and professors, and many of them fled. About eight hundred thousand, chiefly artisans, escaped from the dragoons, who were commissioned to destroy those who would not conform. Many of the exiles, being weavers, were well received in England, where they contributed greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, by their woollen factories in Yorkshire and the west, and by their silk works in Spitalfields, London.

Those who could not escape were treated with every species of brutality. “The troopers, soldiers and dragoons,” says a French Protestant author, in 1686, “went into the Protestants’ houses, where they marred and defaced their household stuff, broke their looking-glasses, and other utensils and ornaments. Those things which they could not destroy in this manner--such as furniture of beds, linens, wearing apparel, plate, &c.,--they carried to the market-place, and sold them to the Jesuits and other Roman Catholics. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into stables for their horses; and treated the owners of the houses where they were quartered with the highest indignity and cruelty, lashing them about from one to another, day and night, without intermission, not suffering them to eat or drink. In several places the soldiers applied ret-hot irons to the hands and feet of men and breasts of women. At Nantes they hung up several women and maids by their feet, and others by their arm-pits, and thus exposed them to public view, stark naked. They bound to posts mothers that gave suck, and let their sucking infants lie languishing in their sight for several days and nights, crying, mourning, and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great fire, and, being half-roasted, let them go--a punishment worse than death. Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were suffocated. They tied some under the arms with ropes, and plunged them again and again into wells; they bound others like criminals, put them to the tortures, and, with a funnel, filled them with wine, till the fumes of it took away their reason, when they made them say they consented to be Catholics. They stripped them naked, and, after a thousand indignities, stuck them with pins and needles from head to foot. They cut and slashed them with knives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers took hold of them by the nose and other parts of the body, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to be Catholics. They beat them with staves, and thus bruised, and with broken bones, dragged them to the church, where their forced presence was taken for abjuration. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to their bed-posts, and, before their eyes, ravished their wives and daughters with impunity. With these scenes of desolation and horror the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and made them only a matter of laughter and sport. Though my heart aches, I beg the reader’s patience to lay before him two other instances, which, if he hath a heart like mine, he will not be able to read without watering these sheets with tears. The _first_ is of a young woman, who being brought before the council, upon refusing to abjure her religion, was ordered to prison. There they shaved her head, singed off the hair from other parts of her body; and having stripped her stark naked, led her through the streets of the city, where many a blow was given her, and stones flung at her; then they set her up to the neck in a tub of water for awhile; they took her out, and put on her a shift dipped in wine, which, as it dried and stuck to her sore and bruised body, they snatched off again, and then had another ready dipped in wine to clap on her. This they repeated six times, thereby making her body exceeding raw and sore. When all these cruelties could not shake her constancy, they fastened her by the feet in a kind of gibbet, and let her hang in that posture, with her head downward, till she expired!

“The other is of a man in whose house were quartered some of these missionary dragoons. One day, having drunk plentifully of his wine, and broken their glasses at every health, they filled the floor with fragments, and by often walking over them reduced them to very small pieces. This done, in the insolence of their mirth they resolved on a dance, and told their Protestant host that he must be one of their company; but as he would not be of their religion, he must dance quite bare-foot; and thus bare-foot they drove him about the room, treading on the sharp points of the broken glasses. When he was no longer able to stand, they laid him on a bed, and, in a short time, stripped him stark naked, and rolled him from one end of the room to the other, till every part of his body was full of the fragments of glass. After this they dragged him to his bed; and, having sent for a surgeon, obliged him to cut out the pieces of glass with his instruments, thereby putting him to the most exquisite and horrible pains that can be possibly conceived!

“These, fellow Protestants, were the methods used by the ‘Most Christian King’s’ apostolic dragoons to convert his heretical subjects to the Roman Catholic faith! These, and many other of the like nature, were the torments to which Louis XIV. delivered them over to bring them to his own church; and as popery is unchangeably the same, these are the tortures prepared for you, if ever that religion should be permitted to become settled amongst you; the consideration of which made Luther say of it, what every man that knows anything of Christianity must agree with him in:--‘If you have no other reason to go out of the Roman church, this alone would suffice, that you see and hear how, contrary to the law of God, THEY SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. This single circumstance shall, God willing, ever separate me from the papacy. And if I was now subject to it, and could blame nothing in any of their doctrines; yet, for this crime of cruelty, I would fly from her communion, as from a den of thieves and murderers!’”