Contrasts
The Reformation history of France is too little known. Its pages are full of interest and romance. That land has yielded more martyrs than all Europe together. The blood of the slain saints reddens it everywhere. Prisons and cells, castles and cottages, caves and mountains, contain histories of bonds and banishment, of fire and sword, of cruelty and darkness, of tears and broken hearts, such as are not to be found in the religious annals of any other country, — save, perhaps, of Spain. For one martyr in England and Scotland there have been five hundred in France,
Yet, strange to say, the Gospel has overspread the former, while it has almost passed away from the latter.
The blood of the martyrs has not always been the seed of the Church; and the “mowing down,” of which the old Father spoke, has not always been followed by the thicker growth. A more sorrowful example of this we have not than France; — France, which, three hundred years ago, seemed destined to take her place side by side with Germany and Geneva in raising for Europe the banner of the cross: nay, which promised then to be the leader and teacher of the nations.
When, in the autumn of 1527, Calvin went to Orleans to study jurisprudence, under Pierre de I’Etoile, it might have seemed as if God were preparing a teacher for France, not for Geneva. And no doubt the seed he sowed in his native land, and the harvest he reaped there, within a quarter of a century, looked as if the Reformation were about to take possession of the whole nation. But, ere the close of the century, the sword and fire of Rome had swept over its cities and villages, slaying or scattering its holiest and wisest and noblest; indicating too plainly that not to France was to be given the honour of any witness-bearing, save that of martyrdom.
When Gerard Roussel, chaplain to the Queen of Navarre, about the year 1530, preached the Gospel in Paris, it looked as if, from within the Church of Rome, a voice was to be heard, whose influence would shake the very citadel. But that voice died away. Roussel would not quit the Church, and his €arly testimony produced no results.
So one witness after another was silenced or removed; and though their testimonies never wholly died out, yet it soon became evident that France was not to take that lead in Reformation, of which it had given early and noble promise.
It is interesting to mark the way in which Wycliffe, about the middle of the fourteenth century, sowed the seed, broadcast, over England. That bold Reformer sent out lay preachers in all directions, by which procedure, while he scattered the truth, he created also a lay element, which has done great things in England ever since. The itinerant preachers,
o staff in hand, without any authority beyond the truth of their message, went over the provinces, preaching in churches when they could get them; when denied these, in streets and market-places, in the fields and roads. Very great was their influence, and very extensive their success, especially as the priesthood did not take alarm immediately; till in the next generation rays of Bible-light had reached almost every part of the kingdom. Wycliffe’s preachers were sometimes ignorant enough, but they were the pioneers of a greater movement than they could forecast. This pre-reformation agency did its work for a time: and though soon checked, yet no violent measures were resorted to, or, at least, carried out. There were no martyrdoms. The sword had not yet been drawn, nor the fire kindled. Even Wycliffe died in peace.
The contrast between England and France is to be noted. Every reformer was made to suffer at the hands of Kome. Persecution in its worst forms was familiar to Europe from the earliest days of the sixteenth century.
The publication, a few years ago, of a vast number of hitherto inedited documents,’“” relating to French
* I refer to the ‘’Bulletin de la Socite de I’Histoire de Protestantisme Frangais: Documents historiques inddits et originaux; 16% 17% 18® Sifecles.” Paris: various years.
Miscellaneous: Past and Presejit. 195
Protestantism, has fully shown this, at least up to a certain date. These volumes are of great price, consisting of original letters, decrees, treatises, hymns, narratives, lists of names, — all relating to the Protestant history of France. They are like the volumes of our Maitland Club, or Wodrow Society, — but perhaps more fragmentary and miscellaneous. The martyr-lists are especially valuable, though containing little more than names and places and professions; not like our Scots Worthies, with narrative or anecdote affixed, but simple designations of the sufferers, like monumental stones. The papers extend over more than two centuries.
As we read these old documents and registers of names, we are impressed with the fact that the Gospel must have covered the whole land very widely indeed. It has been said of England, in the age after Wycliffe, that every third man in the kingdom was a Lollard. Of Bohemia, it is still more explicitly affirmed, that at the time of the Reformation, nine- tenths of the people were anti-Papal. I do not know that I should be much beyond the mark if I were saying of the France of that period, that half of her people had opened their ears to the Gospel. Certainly throughout all its provinces the truth of God had gone forth to a wondrous extent. And the question comes up, How did it enter?
196 The White Fields of Fyance.
We have no full record which can enable us to answer this question in detail. But, in these old letters and contemporaneous histories, we get some glimpses as to the manner in which the light broke in.
The Spirit of God had begun to work everywhere at the beginning of the sixteenth century; — and always in connection with a revived Bible. Quiet spirits in many cities, who had long, in secret, studied the Word, began to be bold and speak out. The sparks went over the land. Other lands helped; or rather the nations helped each other; Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy. The Romish Church took alarm; persecution tried to quench the light, but it spread more and more. Take the following sentence from a manuscript history of d’Aosta, in the Turin Library: “Dans les annees 1535 et 36 jusqu’en 1542, Luther et Calvin, ces mvposUurs ahomenahles, profitant du trouble des guerres d’entre Charles V. et Francis I®^ faisaient repandre leurs erreurs dans ce duche.” ^’”
A few zealous men, raised up in the land itself, or coming from other lands, preached the Gospel, and the Word “grew mightily and prevailed.” Under the most withering influences of Popish cruelty, the Gospel proved itself the power of God;
* “Bulletin,” vol. ix., p. 163.
and France had almost become Protestant. Not the cities only, but the villages, had received the truth. How, by the persecution of two centuries, the truth was expelled, and infidelity reigned, I need not here inquire. It was the entrance of the light that I wished to notice.
In very different circumstances, and by very different agencies, is the light now introduced. By no fiery or bloody persecution is the progress of the Gospel now stayed. Is it to spread as extensively and as rapidly as it did three centuries ago?
The Seventh Annual Report of the Mission to the Working-men of Paris helps us a little to answer this question. In it we see not only the consolidation, but the advancement of the work. We see also not only the many quarters into which it is penetrating, but the many classes of which it is laying hold.
Never has it been so in France before. There have been occasions during the last fifty years in which some glimpses of liberty for the preaching of evangelical truth appeared. But these were on a very small scale. A little liberty under Louis Philippe; a little more under Napoleon; but only since the last war has the liberty been complete, and fully available for the work of evangelisation.
The contrast between Beformation days and the jDresent is as striking as it is instructive. Royal and priestly power united once to stamp out Protestantism, and to quench it in blood. The following letter, written by a young Swiss Romanist, residing in Paris at the College of Clermont, in 1572, will best illustrate the contrast to which we refer. His name was Joachim Opser, from the Canton of St. Gall. Like the Papists of his day, with the Pope at their head, he exulted over the St. Bartholomew Massacre. His letters are the echoes of the unbounded jubilation which rung through the College of Clermont and through all Paris, when, on the 24 th of August, 1572, the Popish assassins made the city flow with Protestant blood. The letter is addressed to the Abbot of St. Gall, and was sent by the hand of Studer Von Winkelbach, who was deputed by Charles IX. to justify the deed of blood to the Swiss Cantons: —
“I was never in greater haste to write to you, at least I have never done so with greater pleasure. France is doing well, and we are as well as possible, thanks to the Most High! Although I have to write to you at length of our private affairs, I must first tell you briefly’ of the joy of the Parisians; the bearer of this letter will give you full and authentic details.
“On the 18th August was the marriage of the King of Navarre with the Princess Margaret, sister of the King; but oh! joy of the Christian people, the 24th August has put an end to the transports of joy which this event occasioned to the heretics. For the Admiral (Coligny) La Rochefoucauld, with
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the most eminent men of the party, have been miserably massacred by order of the King. Their bodies are even now lying on the public squares, exposed to the view of passers-by; but I leave to Captain Studer to relate all these things by word of mouth.”
The bearer of the letter having been delayed,
Joachim writes again on the 26th August: —
“I will now transmit to you some details which will cause you real pleasure; for I do not think I shall weary you with writing more particularly of an event as unexpected as it is useful to our cause, and which not only fills the whole Christian world with admiration, but also lifts them to the height of rejoicing.
The Admiral perished miserably on the 24th, with all the heretic French nobility (without exaggeration). Immense carnage I I shuddered to see the river full of corpses, naked and horribly abused. Hitherto the King has only pardoned the King of Navarre, who to-day went to mass with King Charles, so that great hopes are entertained of him. The sons of Cond6 are in prison by the King’s orders, but are in great danger, for the King will very likely visit these obstinate champions -of heresy with exemplary punishment. Every one agrees in praising the prudence and magnanimity of the King, who, after having, so to speak, by his goodness and indulgence, fattened them as beasts, has had them suddenly slain by his soldiers. All the heretic booksellers that could be found were massacred and thrown naked into the river. Raums, who had leapt from his bedchamber, is stretched without clothing on the river brink, pierced by innumerable dagger- wounds. There are none, not even women, who are not killed or wounded.
“As to the murder of the Admiral. When the Swiss, under the orders of the Duke of Anjou, had broken open the doors, Conrad, followed by Leonhard Griinenfelder of Claris and
Martin Koch, reached the Admiral’s room, which was on the third storey of the house, they first killed his servant. The Admiral was in his dressing-gown, and at first no one would lay hands on him; but Martin Koch, bolder than the others, struck the wretch with his axe, Conrad gave him the third blow, and at the seventh blow he fell dead against the chimney of his room. By order of the Duke de Guise, his body was thrown out of the window, and, after putting a cord round his neck as a malefactor, it was exposed as a s]3ectacle to all the people while being dragged to the Seine. Such was the end of this pernicious man, who, not only in his life brought many to the verge of destruction, but in his death drew a host of noble heretics with him to hell.”
Mr. M’All’s twenty-three stations, — the 8000 old and 3000 young in Paris under Protestant instruction, — are the exhibitions of a wondrous change. Disgusted with Popery, wearied with infidehty, France is seeking rest in the simple Gospel of Christ, asking her way from the crucifix to the cross, from the mass-book to the Bible, and wondering if the liberty of Christ be not better than the bondage of the Pope, if the G antiques popidaires be not more intelligible, at least to the ouvrier, than the Latin Hymni Ecdesice of the Parisian Breviary.