HISTORY OF THE

RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS.

VOLUME I.



A REVIEW OF THIS WORK,

Occupying nearly four columns, appeared in the NEW YORK TRIBUNE of Dec. 30th, 1879, from which the following is extracted.

"It embraces the time from the accession of Francis I. in 1515, to the death of Charles IX. in 1574, at which epoch the doctrines of the Reformation had become well-grounded in France, and the Huguenots had outgrown the feebleness of infancy and stood as a distinct and powerful body before the religious world. In preparing the learned and elaborate work, which will give the name of the author an honourable place on the distinguished list of American historians, Professor Baird has made a judicious use of the researches and discoveries which, during the last thirty years, have shed a fresh light on the history of France at the era of the Reformation. Among the ample stores of knowledge which have been laid open to his inquiries are the archives of the principal capitals of Europe, which have been thoroughly explored for the first time during that period. Numerous manuscripts of great value, for the most part unknown to the learned world, have been rescued from obscurity. At the side of the voluminous chronicles long since printed, a rich abundance of contemporary correspondence and hitherto inedited memoirs has accumulated, which afford a copious collection of life-like and trustworthy views of the past. The secrets of diplomacy have been revealed. The official statements drawn up for the public may now be tested by the more truthful and unguarded accounts conveyed in cipher to all the foreign courts of Europe. Of not less importance, perhaps, than the official publications are the fruits of private research, among which are several valuable collections of original documents. While the author has not failed to enrich his pages with the materials derived from these and similar sources, he has made a careful and patient study of the host of original chronicles, histories, and kindred productions which have long been more or less familiar to the world of letters. The fruits of his studious labours, as presented in these volumes, attest his diligence, his fidelity, his equipoise of judgment, his fairness of mind, his clearness of perception, and his accuracy of statement.

"While the research and well-digested erudition exhibited in this work are eminently creditable to the learning and scholarship of the author, its literary execution amply attests the excellence of his taste, and his judgment and skill in the art of composition. His work is one of the most important recent contributions to American literature, and is entitled to a sincere greeting for its manifold learning and scholarly spirit."



HISTORY OF THE

RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS.

BY

HENRY M. BAIRD,

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH REFORMATION TO THE EDICT OF JANUARY (1562).

London: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXX.

Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury



PREFACE.

The period of about half a century with which these volumes are concerned may properly be regarded as the formative age of the Huguenots of France. It included the first planting of the reformed doctrines, and the steady growth of the Reformation in spite of obloquy and persecution, whether exercised under the forms of law or vented in lawless violence. It saw the gathering and the regular organization of the reformed communities, as well as their consolidation into one of the most orderly and zealous churches of the Protestant family. It witnessed the failure of the bloody legislation of three successive monarchs, and the equally abortive efforts of a fourth monarch to destroy the Huguenots, first with the sword and afterward with the dagger. At the close of this period the faith and resolution of the Huguenots had survived four sanguinary wars into which they had been driven by their implacable enemies. They were just entering upon a fifth war, under favorable auspices, for they had made it manifest to all men that their success depended less upon the lives of leaders, of whom they might be robbed by the hand of the assassin, than upon a conviction of the righteousness of their cause, which no sophistry of their opponents could dissipate. The Huguenots, at the death of Charles the Ninth, stood before the world a well-defined body, that had outgrown the feebleness of infancy, and had proved itself entitled to consideration and respect. Thus much was certain.

The subsequent fortunes of the Huguenots of France—their wars until they obtained recognition and some measure of justice in the Edict of Nantes; the gradual infringement upon their guaranteed rights, culminating in the revocation of the edict, and the loss to the kingdom of the most industrious part of the population; their sufferings "under the cross" until the publication of the Edict of Toleration—these offer an inviting field of investigation, upon which I may at some future time be tempted to enter.[1]

The history of the Huguenots during a great part of the period covered by this work, is, in fact, the history of France as well. The outlines of the action and some of the characters that come upon the stage are, consequently, familiar to the reader of general history. The period has been treated cursorily in writings extending over wider limits, while several of the most striking incidents, including, especially, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, have been made the subject of special disquisitions. Yet, although much study and ingenuity have been expended in elucidating the more difficult and obscure points, there is, especially in the English language, a lack of works upon the general theme, combining painstaking investigation into the older (but not, necessarily, better known) sources of information, and an acquaintance with the results of modern research.

The last twenty-five or thirty years have been remarkably fruitful in discoveries and publications shedding light upon the history of France during the age of the Reformation and the years immediately following. The archives of all the principal, and many of the secondary, capitals of Europe have been explored. Valuable manuscripts previously known to few scholars—if, indeed, known to any—have been rescued from obscurity and threatened destruction. By the side of the voluminous histories and chronicles long since printed, a rich store of contemporary correspondence and hitherto inedited memoirs has been accumulated, supplying at once the most copious and the most trustworthy fund of life-like views of the past. The magnificent "Collection de Documents Inedits sur l'Histoire de France," still in course of publication by the Ministry of Public Instruction, comprehends in its grand design not only extended memoirs, like those of Claude Haton of Provins, but the even more important portfolios of leading statesmen, such as those of Secretary De l'Aubespine and Cardinal Granvelle (not less indispensable for French than for Dutch affairs), and the correspondence of monarchs, as of Henry the Fourth. The secrets of diplomacy have been revealed. Those singularly accurate and sensible reports made to the Doge and Senate of Venice, by the ambassadors of the republic, upon their return from the French court, can be read in the collections of Venetian Relations of Tommaseo and Alberi, or as summarized by Ranke and Baschet. The official statements drawn up for the eyes of the public may now be confronted with and tested by the more truthful and unguarded accounts conveyed in cipher to all the foreign courts of Europe. Including the partial collections of despatches heretofore put in print, we possess, regarding many critical events, the narratives and opinions of such apt observers as the envoys of Spain, of the German Empire, of Venice, and of the Pope, of Wurtemberg, Saxony, and the Palatinate. Above all, we have access to the continuous series of letters of the English ambassadors and minor agents, comprising Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton, Walsingham, Jones, Killigrew, and others, scarcely less skilful in the use of the pen than in the art of diplomacy. This English correspondence, parts of which were printed long ago by Digges, Dr. Patrick Forbes, and Haynes, and other portions by Hardwick, Wright, Tytler-Fraser, etc., can now be read in London, chiefly in the Record Office, and is admirably analyzed in the invaluable "Calendars of State Papers (Foreign Series)," published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. Too much weight can scarcely be given to this source of information and illustration. One of the learned editors enthusiastically remarks concerning a part of it (the letters of Throkmorton[2]): "The historical literature of France, rich as it confessedly is in memoirs and despatches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, possesses (as far as I am aware) no series of papers which can compare either in continuity, fidelity, or minuteness, with the correspondence of Throkmorton.... He had his agents and his spies everywhere throughout France."

Little, if at all, inferior in importance to governmental publications, are the fruits of private research. Several voluminous collections of original documents deserve special mention. Not to speak of the publications of the national French Historical Society, the "Societe de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Francais" has given to the world, in its monthly Bulletin, so many hitherto inedited documents, besides a great number of excellent monographs, that the volumes of this periodical, now in its twenty-eighth year, constitute in themselves an indispensable library of reference. That admirable biographical work, "La France Protestante," by the brothers Haag (at present in course of revision and enlargement); the "Correspondance des Reformateurs dans les Pays de Langue Francaise," by M. Herminjard (of which five volumes have come out), a signal instance of what a single indefatigable student can accomplish; the collections of Calvin's Letters, by M. Jules Bonnet; and the magnificent edition of the same reformer's works, by Professors Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, a treasury of learning, rich in surprises for the historical student—all these merit more particular description than can here be given. The biography of Beza, by Professor Baum, the history of the Princes of Conde, by the Due d'Aumale, the correspondence of Frederick the Pious, edited by Kluckholn, etc., contribute a great deal of previously unpublished material. The sumptuous work of M. Douen on Clement Marot and the Huguenot Psalter sheds new light upon an interesting, but until now obscure subject. The writings of Farel and his associates have been rescued from the oblivion to which the extreme scarcity of the extant copies consigned them; and the "Vray Usage de la Croix," the "Sommaire," and the "Maniere et Fasson," can at last be read in elegant editions, faithful counterparts of the originals in every point save typographical appearance. The same may be said of such celebrated but hitherto unattainable rarities as the "Tigre" of 1560, scrupulously reproduced in fac-simile, by M. Charles Read, of Paris, from the copy belonging to the Hotel-de-Ville, and the fugitive songs and hymns which M. Bordier has gathered in his "Chansonnier Huguenot."

No little value belongs, also, to certain contemporary journals of occurrences given to the world under the titles of "Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois Ier," "Cronique du Roy Francoys, premier de ce nom," "Journal d'un cure ligueur de Paris sous les trois derniers Valois (Jehan de la Fosse)," "Journal de Jean Glaumeau de Bourges," etc.

The revival of interest in the fortunes of their ancestors has led a considerable number of French Protestants to prepare works bearing upon the history of Protestantism in particular cities and provinces. Among these may be noted the works of MM. Douen and Rossier, on Picardy; Recordon, on Champagne; Lievre, on Poitou; Bujeaud, on Angoumois; Vaurigaud, on Brittany; Arnaud, on Dauphiny; Coquerel, on Paris; Borrel, on Nismes; Callot and Delmas, on La Rochelle; Crottet, on Pons, Gemozac, and Mortagne; Corbiere, on Montpellier, etc. Although these books differ greatly in intrinsic importance, and in regard to the exercise of historical criticism, they all have a valid claim to attention by reason of the evidence they afford of individual research.

Of the new light thrown upon the rise of the Huguenots by these and similar works, it has been my aim to make full use. At the same time I have been convinced that no adequate knowledge of the period can be obtained, save by mastering the great array of original chronicles, histories, and kindred productions with which the literary world has long been acquainted, at least by name. This result I have, accordingly, endeavored to reach by careful and patient reading. It is unnecessary to specify in detail the numerous authors through whose writings it became my laborious but by no means ungrateful task to make my way, for the marginal notes will indicate the exact line of the study pursued. It may be sufficient to say, omitting many other names scarcely less important, that I have assiduously studied the works of De Thou, Agrippa d'Aubigne, La Place, La Planche; the important "Histoire Ecclesiastique," ascribed to Theodore de Beze; the "Actiones et Monimenta" of Crespin; the memoirs of Castelnau, Vieilleville, Du Bellay, Tavannes, La Noue, Montluc, Lestoile, and other authors of this period, included in the large collections of memoirs of Petitot, Michaud and Poujoulat, etc.; the writings of Brantome; the Commentaries of Jean de Serres, in their various editions, as well as other writings attributed to the same author; the rich "Memoires de Conde," both in their original and their enlarged form; the series of important documents comprehended in the "Archives curieuses" of Cimber and Danjou; the disquisitions collected by M. Leber; the histories of Davila, Florimond de Raemond, Maimbourg, Varillas, Soulier, Mezeray, Gaillard; the more recent historical works of Sismondi, Martin, Michelet, Floquet; the volumes of Browning, Smedley, and White, in English, of De Felice, Drion, and Puaux, in French, of Barthold, Von Raumer, Ranke, Polenz, Ebeling, and Soldan, in German. The principal work of Professor Soldan, in particular, bounded by the same limits of time with those of the present history, merits, in virtue of accuracy and thoroughness, a wider recognition than it seems yet to have attained. My own independent investigations having conducted me over much of the ground traversed by Professor Soldan, I have enjoyed ample opportunity for testing the completeness of his study and the judicial fairness of his conclusions.

The posthumous treatise of Professor H. Wuttke, "Zur Vorgeschichte der Bartholomaeusnacht," published in Leipsic since the present work was placed in the printer's hands, reached me too late to be noticed in connection with the narrative of the events which it discusses. Notwithstanding Professor Wuttke's recognized ability and assiduity as a historical investigator, I am unable to adopt the position at which he arrives.

I desire here to acknowledge my obligation for valuable assistance in prosecuting my researches to my lamented friend and correspondent, Professor Jean Guillaume Baum, long and honorably connected with the Academie de Strasbourg, than whom France could boast no more indefatigable or successful student of her annals, and who consecrated his leisure hours during forty years to the enthusiastic study of the history of the French and Swiss Reformation. If that history is better understood now than when, in 1838, he submitted as a theological thesis his astonishingly complete "Origines Evangelii in Gallia restaurati," the progress is due in great measure to his patient labors. To M. Jules Bonnet, under whose skilful editorship the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society has reached its present excellence, I am indebted for help afforded me in solving, by means of researches among the MSS. of the Bibliotheque Rationale at Paris, and the Simler Collection at Zurich, several difficult problems. To these names I may add those of M. Henri Bordier, Bibliothecaire Honoraire in the Department of MSS. (Bibliotheque Rationale), of M. Raoul de Cazenove, of Lyons, author of many highly prized monographs on Huguenot topics, and of the Rev. John Forsyth, D.D., who have in various ways rendered me valuable services.

Finally, I deem it both a duty and a privilege to express my warm thanks to the librarians of the Princeton Theological Seminary and of the Union Theological Seminary in this city; and particularly to the successive superintendents and librarians of the Astor Library—both the living and the dead—by the signal courtesy of whom, the whole of that admirable collection of books has been for many years placed at my disposal for purposes of consultation so freely, that nothing has been wanting to make the work of study in its alcoves as pleasant and effective as possible.

UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, September 15, 1879.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Meantime I am glad that we may expect before very long, from the pen of my brother, Charles W. Baird, the history of the Huguenot emigration to the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—a work based upon extensive research, that will afford much interesting information respecting a movement hitherto little understood, and fill an important gap in our historical literature.]

[Footnote 2: Of the different modes of spelling this name, I choose the mode which, according to the numerous fac-similes given by Dr. Forbes, the worthy knight seems himself to have followed with commendable uniformity.]



CONTENTS

OF

VOLUME FIRST.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I Page FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 3 Extent at the Accession of Francis I. 3 Gradual Territorial Growth 4 Subdivision in the Tenth Century 5 Destruction of the Feudal System 5 The Foremost Kingdom of Christendom 6 Assimilation of Manners and Language 8 Growth and Importance of Paris 9 Military Strength 10 The Rights of the People overlooked 11 The States General not convoked 12 Unmurmuring Endurance of the Tiers Etat 13 Absolutism of the Crown 14 Partial Checks 15 The Parliament of Paris 16 Other Parliaments 17 The Parliaments claim the Right of Remonstrance 17 Abuses in the Parliament of Bordeaux 19 Origin and Growth of the University 20 Faculty of Theology, or Sorbonne 22 Its Authority and Narrowness 23 Multitude of Students 24 Credit of the Clergy 25 Liberties of the Gallican Church 25 Pragmatic Sanction of. St. Louis (1268) 26 Conflict of Philip the Fair with Boniface VIII. 27 The "Babylonish Captivity" 28 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) 29 Rejoicing at the Council of Basle 31 Louis XI. undertakes to abrogate the Pragmatic Sanction 32 But subsequently re-enacts it in part 33 Louis XII. publishes it anew 35 Francis I. sacrifices the Interests of the Gallican Church 35 Concordat between Leo X. and the French King 36 Dissatisfaction of the Clergy 37 Struggle with the Parliament of Paris 37 Opposition of the University 39 Patronage of the King 41 The "Renaissance" 41 Francis's Acquirements overrated 42 His Munificent Patronage of Art 42 The College Royal, or "Trilingue" 43 An Age of Blood 44 Barbarous Punishment for Crime 45 And not less for Heresy 46 Belief in Judicial Astrology 47 Predictions of Nostradamus 47 Reverence for Relics 49 For the Consecrated Wafer 50 Internal Condition of the Clergy 51 Number and Wealth of the Cardinals 51 Non-residence of Prelates 52 Revenues of the Clergy 52 Vice and Hypocrisy 53 Brantome's Account of the Clergy before the Concordat 54 Aversion to the Use of the French Language 56 Indecent Processions—"Processions Blanches" 59 The Monastic Orders held in Contempt 60 Protests against prevailing Corruption 61 The "Cathari," or Albigenses 61 Nicholas de Clemangis 63 John Gerson 64 Jean Bouchet's "Deploration of the Church" 65

* * * * *

Changes in the Boundaries of France during the 16th Century 66

CHAPTER II.

1512-1525.

THE REFORMATION IN MEAUX 67 Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples 67 Restores Letters to France 68 Wide Range of his Studies 68 Guillaume Farel, his Pupil 68 Devotion of Teacher and Scholar 69 Lefevre publishes a Latin Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (1512) 70 Enters into Controversy with Natalis Beda (1518) 71 The Sorbonne's Declaration (Nov. 9, 1521) 71 Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux 72 His First Reformatory Efforts 72 Invites Lefevre and Farel to Meaux 73 Effects of the Preaching of Roussel and others 74 De Roma's Threat 76 Lefevre publishes a Translation of the New Testament (1523) 77 The Results surpass Expectation 79 Bishop Briconnet's Weakness 80 Forbids the "Lutheran" Doctors to preach 81 Lefevre and Roussel take Refuge in Strasbourg 84 Jean Leclerc whipped and branded 87 His barbarous Execution at Metz 88 Pauvan burned on the Place de Greve 89 The Hermit of Livry 92 Briconnet becomes a Jailer of "Lutherans" 92 Lefevre's Writings condemned by the Sorbonne (1525) 93 He becomes Tutor of Prince Charles 94 Librarian at Blois 94 Ends his Days at Nerac 95 His Mental Anguish 95 Michel d'Arande and Gerard Roussel 96

CHAPTER III.

1523-1525.

FRANCIS I. AND MARGARET OF ANGOULEME—EARLY REFORMATORY MOVEMENTS AND STRUGGLES 99 Francis I. and Margaret of Angouleme 99 The King's Chivalrous Disposition 100 Appreciates Literary Excellence 101 Contrast with Charles V. 101 His Religious Convictions 102 His Fear of Innovation 102 His Loose Morality 103 Margaret's Scholarly Attainments 104 Her Personal Appearance 105 Her Participation in Public Affairs 106 Her First Marriage to the Duke of Alencon 106 Obtains a Safe-Conduct to visit her Brother 106 Her Second Marriage, to Henry, King of Navarre 107 Bishop Briconnet's Mystic Correspondence 108 Luther's Teachings solemnly condemned by the University 108 Melanchthon's Defence 109 Regency of Louise de Savoie 109 The Sorbonne suggests Means of extirpating the "Lutheran Doctrines" (Oct. 7, 1523) 110 Wide Circulation of Luther's Treatises 112 Francois Lambert, of Avignon 112 Life among the Franciscans 113 Lambert, the first French Monk to embrace the Reformation 113 He is also the First to Marry 114 Jean Chatellain at Metz 114 Wolfgang Schuch at St. Hippolyte 115 Farel at Montbeliard 117 Pierre Caroli lectures on the Psalms 118

* * * * *

The Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre 119

CHAPTER IV.

1525-1533.

INCREASED SEVERITY—LOUIS DE BERQUIN 122 Captivity of Francis I. 122 Change in the Religious Policy of Louise 123 A Commission appointed to try "Lutherans" 124 The Inquisition heretofore jealously watched 125 The Commission indorsed by Clement VII. 126 Its Powers enlarged by the Bull 128 Character of Louis de Berquin 128 He becomes a warm Partisan of the Reformation 129 First Imprisonment (1523) 130 Released by Order of the King 130 Advice of Erasmus 131 Second Imprisonment (1526) 131 Francis from Madrid again orders his Release 132 Dilatory Measures of Parliament 132 Margaret of Angouleme's Hopes 133 Francis violates his Pledges to Charles V. 134 Must conciliate the Pope and Clergy 135 Promises to prove himself "Very Christian" 137 The Council of Sens (1528) 138 Cardinal Duprat 138 Vigorous Measures to suppress Reformation 139 The Councils of Bourges and Lyons 139 Financial Help bought by Persecution 140 Insult to an Image and an Expiatory Procession 141 Other Iconoclastic Excesses 143 Berquin's Third Arrest 143 His Condemnation to Penance, Branding, and Perpetual Imprisonment 145 He Appeals 145 Is suddenly Sentenced to Death and Executed 146 Francis Treats with the Germans 147 And with Henry VIII. of England 148 Francis meets Clement at Marseilles 148 Marriage of Henry of Orleans to Catharine de' Medici 148 Francis Refuses to join in a general Scheme for the Extermination of Heresy 149 Execution of Jean de Caturce, at Toulouse 150 Le Coq's Evangelical Sermon 151 Margaret attacked at College of Navarre 152 Her "Miroir de l'Ame Pecheresse" condemned 152 Rector Cop's Address to the University 153 Calvin, the real Author, seeks Safety in Flight 154 Rough Answer of Francis to the Bernese 155 Royal Letter to the Bishop of Paris 156

* * * * *

Elegies on Louis de Berquin 157

CHAPTER V.

1534-1535.

MELANCHTHON'S ATTEMPT AT CONCILIATION, AND THE YEAR OF THE PLACARDS 159 Hopes of Reunion in the Church 159 Melanchthon and Du Bellay 160 A Plan of Reconciliation 160 Its Extreme Concessions 161 Makes a Favorable Impression on Francis 162 Indiscreet Partisans of Reform 162 Placards and Pasquinades 163 Feret's Mission to Switzerland 164 The Placard against the Mass 164 Excitement produced in Paris (Oct. 18, 1534) 167 A Copy posted on the Door of the Royal Bedchamber 167 Anger of Francis at the Insult 167 Political Considerations 168 Margaret of Navarre's Entreaties 168 Francis Abolishes the Art of Printing (Jan. 13, 1535) 169 The Rash and Shameful Edict Recalled 170 Rigid Investigation and many Victims 171 The Expiatory Procession (Jan. 21, 1535) 173 The King's Speech at the Episcopal Palace 176 Constancy of the Victims 177 The Estrapade 177 Flight of Clement Marot and others 179 Royal Declaration of Coucy (July 16, 1535) 179 Alleged Intercession of Pope Paul III. 180 Clemency again dictated by Policy 181 Francis's Letter to the German Princes 182 Sturm and Vore beg Melanchthon to come 182 Melanchthon's Perplexity 183 He is formally invited by the King 184 Applies to the Elector for Permission to go 184 But is roughly refused 185 The Proposed Conference reprobated by the Sorbonne 187 Du Bellay at Smalcald 188 He makes for Francis a Protestant Confession 189 Efforts of French Protestants in Switzerland and Germany 191 Intercession of Strasbourg, Basle, etc. 191 Unsatisfactory Reply by Anne de Montmorency 193

CHAPTER VI.

1535-1545.

CALVIN AND GENEVA—MORE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION BY THE KING 193 Changed Attitude of Francis 193 Occasioned by the "Placards" 194 Margaret of Navarre and Roussel 195 The French Reformation becomes a Popular Movement 196 Independence of Geneva secured by Francis 197 John Calvin's Childhood 198 He studies in Paris and Orleans 199 Change of Religious Views at Bourges 199 His Commentary on Seneca's "De Clementia" 200 Escapes from Paris to Angouleme 201 Leaves France 202 The "Christian Institutes" 202 Address to Francis the First 203 Calvin wins instant Celebrity 204 The Court of Renee of Ferrara 205 Her History and Character 206 Calvin's alleged Visit to Aosta 207 He visits Geneva 208 Farel's Vehemence 209 Calvin consents to remain 210 His Code of Laws for Geneva 210 His View of the Functions of the State 210 Heretics to be constrained by the Sword 211 Calvin's View that of the other Reformers 212 And even of Protestant Martyrs 212 Calvin longs for Scholarly Quiet 213 His Mental Constitution 214 Ill-health and Prodigious Labors 214 Friendly and Inimical Estimates 214 Violent Persecutions throughout France 216 Royal Edict of Fontainebleau (June 1, 1540) 218 Increased Severity, and Appeal cut off 218 Exceptional Fairness of President Caillaud 219 Letters-Patent from Lyons (Aug. 30, 1542) 220 The King and the Sacramentarians 221 Ordinance of Paris (July 23, 1543) 221 Heresy to be punished as Sedition 222 Repression proves a Failure 222 The Sorbonne publishes Twenty-five Articles 223 Francis gives them the Force of Law (March 10, 1543) 224 More Systematic Persecution 224 The Inquisitor Mathieu Ory 224 The Nicodemites and Libertines 225 Margaret of Navarre at Bordeaux 226 Francis's Negotiations in Germany 227 Hypocritical Representations made by Charles, Duke of Orleans 228

CHAPTER VII.

1545-1547.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE VAUDOIS OF MERINDOL AND CABRIERES, AND LAST DAYS OF FRANCIS I. 230 The Vaudois of the Durance 230 Their Industry and Thrift 230 Embassy to German and Swiss Reformers 232 Translation of the Bible by Olivetanus 233 Preliminary Persecutions 234 The Parliament of Aix 235 The Atrocious "Arret de Merindol" (Nov. 18, 1540) 236 Condemned by Public Opinion 237 Preparations to carry it into Effect 237 President Chassanee and the Mice of Autun 238 The King instructs Du Bellay to investigate 239 A Favorable Report 240 Francis's Letter of Pardon 241 Parliament's Continued Severity 241 The Vaudois publish a Confession 242 Intercession of the Protestant Princes of Germany 242 The new President of Parliament 243 Sanguinary Royal Order, fraudulently obtained (Jan. 1, 1545) 244 Expedition stealthily organized 245 Villages burned—their Inhabitants murdered 246 Destruction of Merindol 247 Treacherous Capture of Cabrieres 248 Women burned and Men butchered 248 Twenty-two Towns and Villages destroyed 249 A subsequent Investigation 251 "The Fourteen of Meaux" 253 Wider Diffusion of the Reformed Doctrines 256 The Printer Jean Chapot before Parliament 256

CHAPTER VIII.

1547-1559.

HENRY THE SECOND AND THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCHES 258 Impartial Estimates of Francis the First 258 Henry, as Duke of Orleans 259 His Sluggish Mind 260 His Court 261 Diana of Poitiers 262 The King's Infatuation 262 Constable Anne de Montmorency 263 His Cruelty 264 Disgraced by Francis, but recalled by Henry 265 Duke Claude of Guise, and John, first Cardinal of Lorraine 266 Marriage of James the Fifth of Scotland to Mary of Lorraine 268 Francis the Dauphin affianced to Mary of Scots 268 Francis of Guise and Charles of Lorraine 268 Various Estimates of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine 270 Rapacity of the new Favorites 272 Servility toward Diana of Poitiers 273 Persecution to atone for Moral Blemishes 274 "La Chambre Ardente" 275 Edict of Fontainebleau against Books from Geneva (Dec. 11, 1547) 275 Deceptive Title-pages 275 The Tailor of the Rue St. Antoine 276 Other Victims of Intolerance 278 Severe Edicts and Quarrels with Rome 278 Edict of Chateaubriand (June 27, 1551) 279 The War against Books from Geneva 280 Marshal Vieilleville refuses to profit by Confiscation 282 The "Five Scholars of Lausanne" 283 Interpositions in their Behalf ineffectual 284 Activity of the Canton of Berne 286 Progress of the Reformation in Normandy 287 Attempt to establish the Spanish Inquisition 287 Opposition of Parliament 288 President Seguier's Speech 289 Coligny's Scheme of American Colonization 291 Villegagnon in Brazil 292 He brings Ruin on the Expedition 293 First Protestant Church in Paris 294 The Example followed in the Provinces 296 Henry the Second breaks the Truce 297 Fresh Attempts to introduce the Spanish Inquisition 298 Three Inquisitors-General 299 Judges sympathize with the Victims 300 Edict of Compiegne (July 24, 1557) 301 Defeat of St. Quentin (August 10, 1557) 302 Vengeance wreaked upon the Protestants 302 Affair of the Rue St. Jacques (Sept. 4, 1557) 303 Treatment of the Prisoners 304 Malicious Rumors 305 Trials and Executions 307 Intercession of the Swiss Cantons and Others 308 Constancy of Some and Release of Others 311 Controversial Pamphlets 311 Capture of Calais (January, 1558) 312 Registry of the Inquisition Edict 312 Antoine of Navarre, Conde, and other Princes favor the Protestants 313 Embassy of the Protestant Electors 313 Psalm-singing on the Pre aux Clercs 314 Conference of Cardinals Lorraine and Granvelle 315 D'Andelot's Examination before the King 317 His Constancy in Prison and temporary Weakness 318 Paul IV.'s Indignation at the King's Leniency 320 Anxiety for Peace 321 Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (April 3, 1559) 322 Sacrifice of French Interests 323 Was there a Secret Treaty for the Extermination of Protestants? 324 The Prince of Orange learns the Designs of Henry and Philip 325 Danger of Geneva 320 Parliament suspected of Heretical Leanings 329 The "Mercuriale" 330 Henry goes in Person to hear the Deliberations (June 10, 1559) 332 Fearlessness of Du Bourg and Others 334 Henry orders their Arrest 335 First National Synod (May 26, 1559) 335 Ecclesiastical Discipline adopted 336 Marriages and Festivities of the Court 338 Henry mortally wounded in the Tournament (June 30, 1559) 339 His Death (July 10, 1559) 340

* * * * *

"La Facon de Geneve"—the Protestant Service 341 Farel's "Maniere et Fasson" (1533) 342 Calvin's Liturgy (1542) 343

CHAPTER IX.

JULY, 1559-MAY, 1560.

FRANCIS THE SECOND AND THE TUMULT OF AMBOISE 346 Epigrams on the Death of Henry 346 The Young King 347 Catharine de' Medici 348 Favors the Family of Guise 350 Who make themselves Masters of the King 351 Constable Montmorency retires 352 Antoine, King of Navarre 354 His Remissness and Pusillanimity 355 The Persecution continues 359 Denunciation and Pillage at Paris 360 The Protestants address Catharine 362 Pretended Orgies in "La Petite Geneve" 365 Cruelty of the Populace 366 Traps for Heretics 367 Trial of Anne du Bourg 368 Intercession of the Elector Palatine 370 Du Bourg's Last Speech 371 His Execution and its Effect 372 Florimond de Raemond's Observations 374 Revulsion against the Tyranny of the Guises 375 Calvin and Beza discountenance Armed Resistance 377 De la Renaudie 379 Assembly of Malcontents at Nantes 380 Plans well devised 381 Betrayed by Des Avenelles 382 The "Tumult of Amboise" 383 Coligny gives Catharine good Counsel 384 The Edict of Amnesty (March, 1560) 385 A Year's Progress 386 Confusion at Court 387 Treacherous Capture of Castelnau 388 Death of La Renaudie 389 Plenary Commission given to the Duke of Guise 389 A Carnival of Blood 391 The Elder D'Aubigne and his Son 393 Francis and the Prince of Conde 393 Conde's Defiance 394

* * * * *

An alleged Admission of Disloyal Intentions by La Renaudie 394

CHAPTER X.

MAY-DECEMBER, 1560.

THE ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES AT FONTAINEBLEAU, AND THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF FRANCIS THE SECOND 397 Rise of the Name of the Huguenots 397 Their Sudden Growth 399 How to be accounted for 400 Progress of Letters 400 Marot's and Beza's Psalms 402 Morality and Martyrdom 402 Character of the Protestant Ministers 402 Testimony of Bishop Montluc 403 Preaching in the Churches of Valence 404 The Reformation and Morals 406 Francis orders Extermination 406 Large Congregations at Nismes 407 Mouvans in Provence 407 A Popular Awakening 408 Pamphlets against the Guises 409 Catharine consults the Huguenots 409 Edict of Romorantin (May, 1560) 410 No Abatement of Rigorous Persecution 411 Spiritual Jurisdiction differing little from the Inquisition 411 Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital 412 Continued Disquiet—Montbrun 414 Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau (Aug. 21, 1560) 415 The Chancellor's Address 416 The Finances of France 416 Admiral Coligny presents the Petitions of the Huguenots 416 Bishop Montluc ably advocates Toleration 418 Bishop Marillac's Eloquent Speech 420 Coligny's Suggestions 421 Passionate Rejoinder of the Duke of Guise 422 The Cardinal of Lorraine more calm 423 New Alarms of the Guises 424 The King of Navarre and Conde summoned to Court 425 Advice of Philip of Spain 426 Navarre's Irresolution embarrasses Montbrun and Mouvans 427 The "Fashion of Geneva" embraced by many in Languedoc 428 Elections for the States General 430 The King and Queen of Navarre 431 Beza at the Court of Nerac 432 New Pressure to induce Navarre and Conde to come 433 Navarre Refuses a Huguenot Escort 434 Disregards Warnings 435 Is refused Admission to Poitiers 435 Conde arrested on arriving at Orleans 436 Return of Renee de France 437 Conde's Intrepidity 437 He is Tried and Condemned to Death 439 Antoine of Navarre's Danger 440 Plan for annihilating the Huguenots 441 Sudden Illness and Death of Francis the Second 442

* * * * *

The "Epitre au Tigre de la France" 445

CHAPTER XI.

DECEMBER, 1560-SEPTEMBER, 1561.

THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE NINTH, TO THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE COLLOQUY OF POISSY 449 Sudden Change in the Political Situation 449 The Enemy of the Huguenots buried as a Huguenot 450 Antoine of Navarre's Opportunity 451 Adroitness of Catharine de' Medici 452 Financial Embarrassments 453 Catharine's Neutrality 453 Opening of the States General of Orleans 454 Address of Chancellor L'Hospital 455 Cardinal Lorraine's Effrontery 457 De Rochefort, Orator for the Noblesse 457 L'Ange for the Tiers Etat 458 Arrogant Speech of Quintin for the Clergy 458 A Word for the poor, down-trodden People 459 Coligny presents a Huguenot Petition 461 The States prorogued 461 Meanwhile Prosecutions for Religion to cease 462 Return of Fugitives 463 Charles writes to stop Ministers from Geneva 463 Reply of the Genevese 464 Conde cleared and reconciled with Guise 465 Humiliation of Navarre 466 The Boldness of the Particular Estates of Paris 467 Secures Antoine more Consideration 467 Intrigue of Artus Desire 468 General Curiosity to hear Huguenot Preaching 468 Constable Montmorency's Disgust 469 The "Triumvirate" formed 471 A Spurious Statement 471 Massacres of Protestants in Holy Week 474 The Affair at Beauvais 474 Assault on the House of M. de Longjumeau 476 New and Tolerant Royal Order 476 Opposition of the Parisian Parliament 477 Popular Cry for Pastors 479 Moderation of the Huguenot Ministers 479 Judicial Perplexity 481 The "Mercuriale" of 1561 481 The "Edict of July" 483 Its Severity creates extreme Disappointment 484 Iconoclasm at Montauban 485 Impatience with Public "Idols" 487 Calvin endeavors to repress it 487 Re-assembling of the States at Pontoise 488 Able Harangue of the "Vierg" of Autun 489 Written Demands of the Tiers Etat 490 A Representative Government demanded 492 The French Prelates at Poissy 493 Beza and Peter Martyr invited to France 494 Urgency of the Parisian Huguenots 496 Beza comes to St. Germain 497 His previous History 497 Wrangling of the Prelates 498 Cardinal Chatillon communes "under both Forms" 499 Catharine and L'Hospital zealous for a Settlement of Religious Questions 499 A Remarkable Letter to the Pope 500 Beza's flattering Reception 502 He meets the Cardinal of Lorraine 503 Petition of the Huguenots respecting the Colloquy 505 Informally granted 507 Last Efforts of the Sorbonne to prevent the Colloquy 508

CHAPTER XII.

SEPTEMBER, 1561-JANUARY, 1562.

THE COLLOQUY OF POISSY AND THE EDICT OF JANUARY 509 The Huguenot Ministers and Delegates 509 Assembled Princes in the Nuns' Refectory 510 The Prelates 511 Diffidence of Theodore Beza 512 Opening Speech of Chancellor L'Hospital 512 The Huguenots summoned 513 Beza's Prayer and Address 514 His Declaration as to the Body of Christ 519 Outcry of the Theologians of the Sorbonne 519 Beza's Peroration 520 Cardinal Tournon would cut short the Conference 521 Catharine de' Medici is decided 522 Advantages gained 522 The Impression made by Beza 522 His Frankness justified 524 The Prelates' Notion of a Conference 526 Peter Martyr arrives 527 Cardinal Lorraine replies to Beza 528 Cardinal Tournon's new Demand 529 Advancing Shadows of Civil War 530 Another Session reluctantly conceded 531 Beza's Reply to Cardinal Lorraine 532 Claude d'Espense and Claude de Sainctes 532 Lorraine demands Subscription to the Augsburg Confession 533 Beza's Home Thrust 534 Peter Martyr and Lainez the Jesuit 536 Close of the Colloquy of Poissy 537 A Private Conference at St. Germain 538 A Discussion of Words 540 Catharine's Premature Delight 541 The Article agreed upon Rejected by the Prelates 541 Catharine's Financial Success 543 Order for the Restitution of Churches 544 Arrival of Five German Delegates 544 Why the Colloquy proved a Failure 546 Catharine's Crude Notion of a Conference 547 Character of the Prelates 547 Influence of the Papal Legate, the Cardinal of Ferrara 548 Anxiety of Pius the Fourth 548 The Nuncio Santa Croce 549 Master Renard turned Monk 551 Opposition of People and Chancellor 551 The Legate's Intrigues 552 His Influence upon Antoine of Navarre 554 Contradictory Counsels 555 The Triumvirate leave in Disgust 556 Hopes entertained by the Huguenots respecting Charles 557 Beza is begged to remain 559 A Spanish Plot to kidnap the Duke of Orleans 559 The Number of Huguenot Churches 560 Beza secures a favorable Royal order 560 Rapid Growth of the Reformation 561 Immense Assemblages from far and near 562 The Huguenots at Montpellier 563 The Rein and not the Spur needed 565 Marriages and Baptisms at Court "after the Geneva Fashion" 565 Tanquerel's Seditious Declaration 566 Jean de Hans 567 Philip threatens Interference in French Affairs 567 "A True Defender of the Faith" 568 Roman Catholic Complaints of Huguenot Boldness 570 The "Tumult of Saint Medard" 571 Assembly of Notables at St. Germain 574 Diversity of Sentiments 575 The "Edict of January" 576 The Huguenots no longer Outlaws 577



BOOK FIRST.

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH REFORMATION TO THE EDICT OF JANUARY (1562).



CHAPTER I.

FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

[Sidenote: Extent of France at the accession of Francis the First.]

When, on the first day of the year 1515, the young Count of Angouleme succeeded to the throne left vacant by the death of his kinsman and father-in-law, Louis the Twelfth, the country of which he became monarch was already an extensive, flourishing, and well-consolidated kingdom. The territorial development of France was, it is true, far from complete. On the north, the whole province of Hainault belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, whose boundary line was less than one hundred miles distant from Paris. Alsace and Lorraine had not yet been wrested from the German Empire. The "Duchy" of Burgundy, seized by Louis the Eleventh immediately after the death of Charles the Bold, had, indeed, been incorporated into the French realm; but the "Free County" of Burgundy—la Franche Comte, as it was briefly designated—had been imprudently suffered to fall into other hands, and Besancon was the residence of a governor appointed by princes of the House of Hapsburg. Lyons was a frontier town; for the little districts of Bresse and Bugey, lying between the Saone and Rhone, belonged to the Dukes of Savoy. Further to the south, two fragments of foreign territory were completely enveloped by the domain of the French king. The first was the sovereign principality of Orange, which, after having been for over a century in the possession of the noble House of Chalons, was shortly to pass into that of Nassau, and to furnish the title of William the Silent, the future deliverer of Holland. The other and larger one was the Comtat Venaissin, a fief directly dependent upon the Pope. Of irregular shape, and touching the Rhone both above and below Orange, the Comtat Venaissin nearly enclosed the diminutive principality in its folds. Its capital, Avignon, having forfeited the distinction enjoyed in the fourteenth century as the residence of the Roman Pontiffs, still boasted the presence of a Legate of the Papal See, a poor compensation for the loss of its past splendor. On the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Spanish dominions still extended north of the principal chain of the Pyrenees, and included the former County of Roussillon.

[Sidenote: Territorial development.]

But, although its area was somewhat smaller than that of the modern republic, France in the sixteenth century had nearly attained the general dimensions marked out for it by great natural boundaries. Four hundred years had been engrossed in the pursuit of territorial enlargement. At the close of the tenth century the Carlovingian dynasty, essentially foreign in tastes and language, was supplanted by a dynasty of native character and capable of gathering to its support all those elements of strength which had been misunderstood or neglected by the feeble descendants of Charlemagne. But it found the royal authority reduced to insignificance and treated with open contempt. By permitting those dignities which had once been conferred as a reward for pre-eminent personal merit to become hereditary in certain families, the crown had laid the foundation of the feudal system; while, by neglecting to enforce its sovereign claims, it had enabled the great feudatories to make themselves princes independent in reality, if not in name. So low had the consideration of the throne fallen, that when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, in 987 assumed the title of king of France, basing his act partly on an election by nobles, partly on force of arms, the transaction elicited little opposition from the rival lords who might have been expected to resent his usurpation.

[Sidenote: Excessive subdivision in the tenth century.]

France contained at this time six principal fiefs—four in the north and two in the south—each nearly or fully as powerful as the hereditary dominions of Hugh, while probably more than one excelled them in extent. These limited dominions, on the resources of which the new dynasty was wholly dependent in the struggle for supremacy, embraced the important cities of Paris and Orleans, but barely stretched from the Somme to the Loire, and were excluded from the ocean by the broad possessions of the dukes of Normandy on both sides of the lower Seine. The great fiefs had each in turn yielded to the same irresistible tendency to subdivision. The great feudatory was himself the superior of the tenants of several subordinate, yet considerable, fiefs. The possessors of these again ranked above the viscounts of cities and the provincial barons. A long series of gradations in dignity ended at the simple owners of castles, with their subject peasants or serfs. In no country of Europe had the feudal system borne a more abundant harvest of disintegration and consequent loss of power.[3]

[Sidenote: Decline of the feudal system.]

The reduction of the insubordinate nobles on the patrimonial estates of the crown was the first problem engaging the attention of the early Capetian kings. When this had at length been solved, with the assistance of the scanty forces lent by the cities—never amounting, it is said, to more than five hundred men-at-arms[4]—Louis the Fat, a prince of resplendent ability, early in the twelfth century addressed himself to the task of making good the royal title to supremacy over the neighboring provinces. Before death compelled him to forego the prosecution of his ambitious designs, the influence of the monarchy had been extended over eastern and central France—from Flanders, on the north, to the volcanic mountains of Auvergne, on the south. Meanwhile the oppressed subjects of the petty tyrants, whether within or around his domains, had learned to look for redress to the sovereign lord who prided himself upon his ability and readiness to succor the defenceless. His grandson, the more illustrious Philip Augustus (1180-1223), by marriage, inheritance, and conquest added to previous acquisitions several extensive provinces, of which Normandy, Maine, and Poitou had been subject to English rule, while Vermandois and Yalois had enjoyed a form of approximate independence under collateral branches of the Capetian family.

The conquests of Louis the Fat and of Philip Augustus were consolidated by Louis the Ninth—Saint Louis, as succeeding generations were wont to style him—an upright monarch, who scrupled to accept new territory without remunerating the former owners, and even alienated the affection of provinces which he might with apparent justice have retained, by ceding them to the English, in the vain hope of cementing a lasting peace between the rival states.[5]

[Sidenote: France the foremost kingdom of Christendom.]

The same pursuit of territorial aggrandizement under successive kings extended the domain of the crown, in spite of disaster and temporary losses, until in the sixteenth century France was second to no other country in Europe for power and material resources. United under a single head, and no longer disturbed by the insubordination of the turbulent nobles, lately humbled by the craft of Louis the Eleventh, this kingdom awakened the warm admiration of political judges so shrewd as the diplomatic envoys of the Venetian Republic. "All these provinces," exclaimed one of these agents, in a report made to the Doge and Senate soon after his return, "are so well situated, so liberally provided with river-courses, harbors, and mountain ranges, that it may with safety be asserted that this realm is not only the most noble in Christendom, rivalling in antiquity our own most illustrious commonwealth, but excels all other states in natural advantages and security."[6] Another of the same distinguished school of statesmen, taking a more deliberate survey of the country, gives utterance to the universal estimate of his age, when averring that France is to be regarded as the foremost kingdom of Christendom, whether viewed in respect to its dignity and power, or the rank of the prince who governs it.[7] In proof of the first of these claims he alleges the fact that, whereas England had once been, and Naples was at that moment dependent upon the Church, and Bohemia and Poland sustained similar relations to the Empire, France had always been a sovereign state. "It is also the oldest of European kingdoms, and the first that was converted to Christianity," remarks the same writer; adding, with a touch of patriotic pride, the proviso, "if we except the Pope, who is the universal head of religion, and the State of Venice, which, as it first sprang into existence a Christian commonwealth, has always continued such."[8]

[Sidenote: France contrasted with England.]

Other diplomatists took the same view of the power and resources of this favored country. "The kingdom of France," said Chancellor Bacon, in a speech against the policy of rendering open aid to Scotland, and thus becoming involved in a war with the French, "is four times as large as the realm of England, the men four times as many, and the revenue four times as much, and it has better credit. France is full of expert captains and old soldiers, and besides its own troops it may entertain as many Almains as it is able to hire."[9]

[Sidenote: Assimilation of language and manners.]

Meantime France was fast becoming more homogeneous than it had ever been since the fall of the Roman power. As often as the lines of the great feudal families became extinct, or these families were induced or compelled to renounce their pretensions, their fiefs were given in appanage to younger branches of the royal house, or were more closely united to the domains of the crown, and entrusted to governors of the king's appointment.[10] In either case the actual control of affairs was placed in the hands of officers whose highest ambition was to reproduce in the provincial capital the growing elegance of the great city on the Seine where the royal court had fixed its ordinary abode. The provinces, consequently, began to assimilate more and more to Paris, and this not merely in manners, but in forms of speech and even in pronunciation. The rude patois, since it grated upon the cultivated ear, was banished from polite society, and, if not consigned to oblivion, was relegated to the more ignorant and remoter districts. Learning held its seat in Paris, and the scholars who returned to their homes after a sojourn in its academic halls were careful to avoid creating doubts respecting the thoroughness of their training by the use of any dialect but that spoken in the neighborhood of the university. As the idiom of Paris asserted its supremacy over the rest of France, a new tie was constituted, binding together provinces diverse in origin and history.

[Sidenote: The nobles flock to Paris.]

The spirit of obedience pervading all classes of the population contributed much to the national strength. The great nobles had lost their excessive privileges. They no longer attempted, in the seclusion of their ancestral estates, to rival the magnificence or defy the authority of the king. They began to prefer the capital to the freer retreat of their castles. During the reign of Francis the First, and still more during the reign of his immediate successors, costly palaces for the accommodation of princely and ducal families were reared in the neighborhood of the Louvre.[11] It was currently reported that more than one fortune had been squandered in the hazardous experiment of maintaining a pomp befitting the courtier. Ultimately the poorer grandees were driven to the adoption of the wise precaution of spending only a quarter of the year in the enticing but dangerous vicinity of the throne.[12]

[Sidenote: The cities.]

The cities, also, whose extensive privileges had constituted one of the most striking features of the political system of mediaeval Europe, had been shorn of their exorbitant claims founded upon royal charters or prescriptive usage. The kings of France, in particular, had favored the growth of the municipalities, in order to secure their assistance in the reduction of refractory vassals. Flourishing trading communities had sprung up on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and of the ocean, and on the banks of the navigable rivers emptying into them. These corporations had secured a degree of independence proportioned, for the most part, to the weakness of their neighbors. The policy of the crown had been, while generously conferring privileges of great importance upon the cities lying within the royal domain, to make still more lavish concessions in favor of the municipalities upon or contiguous to the lands of the great feudatories.[13]

[Sidenote: The capital.]

No sooner, however, did the humiliation of the landed nobility render it superfluous to conciliate the good-will of the proud and opulent citizens, than the readiest means were sought for reducing them to the level of ordinary subjects. Paris especially, once almost a republic, had of late learned submission and docility.[14] By the change, however, the capital had lost neither wealth nor inhabitants, being described as very rich and populous, covering a vast area, and wholly given up to trade.[15] In the absence of an accurate census, the number of its inhabitants was variously stated at from 300,000 souls to nearly thrice as many; but all accounts agreed in placing Paris among the foremost cities of the civilized world.[16]

[Sidenote: Military resources.]

With the military resources at his command, the king had the means of rendering himself formidable abroad and secure at home. The French cavalry, consisting of gentlemen whose duty and honorable distinction it was to follow the monarch in every expedition, still sustained the reputation for the impetuous ardor and the irresistible weight of its charges which it had won during the Middle Ages. If it had encountered unexpected rebuffs on the fields of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the chivalry of France had been too successful in other engagements to lose courage and enthusiasm. The nobles, both old and young, were still ready at any time to flock to their prince's standard when unfurled for an incursion into Naples or the Milanese. Never had they displayed more alacrity or self-sacrificing devotion than when young Francis the First set out upon his campaigns in Italy.[17] The French infantry was less trustworthy. The troops raised in Normandy, Brittany, and Languedoc were reported to be but poorly trained to military exercises; but the foot-soldiers supplied by some of the frontier provinces were sturdy and efficient, and the gallant conduct of the Gascons at the disastrous battle of St. Quentin was the subject of universal admiration.[18]

[Sidenote: Foreign mercenary troops.]

What France lacked in cavalry was customarily supplied by the Reiters, whose services were easily purchased in Germany. The same country stood ready to furnish an abundance of Lansquenets (Lanzknechten), or pikemen, who, together with the Swiss, in a great measure replaced the native infantry. A Venetian envoy reported, in 1535, that the French king could, in six weeks at longest, set on foot a force of forty-eight thousand men, of whom twenty-one thousand, or nearly one-half, would be foreign mercenaries. His navy, besides his great ship of sixty guns lying in the harbor of Havre, numbered thirty galleys, and a few other vessels of no great importance.[19]

[Sidenote: The rights of the people overlooked.]

[Sidenote: The States General an object of suspicion.]

The power gained by the crown through the consolidation of the monarchy had been acquired at the expense of the popular liberties. In the prolonged struggle between the king, as lord paramount, and his insubordinate vassals, the rights of inferior subjects had received little consideration. From the strife the former issued triumphant, with an asserted claim to unlimited power. The voice of the masses was but feebly heard in the States General—a convocation of all three orders called at irregular intervals. Upon the ordinary policy of government, this, the only representative body, exercised no permanent control. If, in its occasional sessions, the deputies of the Tiers Etat exhibited a disposition to intermeddle in those political concerns which the crown claimed as its exclusive prerogative, the king and his advisers found in their audacity an additional motive for postponing as long as possible a resort to an expedient so disagreeable as the assembling of the States General. Already had monarchs begun to look with suspicion upon the growing intelligence of untitled subjects, who might sooner or later come to demand a share in the public administration.

[Sidenote: And rarely convoked.]

[Sidenote: A long break in the history of representative government.]

[Sidenote: Compensating advantages.]

It was, therefore, only when the succession to the throne was contested, or when the perils attending the minority of the prince demanded the popular sanction of the choice of a regent, or when the flames of civil war seemed about to burst forth and involve the whole country in one general conflagration, that the royal consent could be obtained for convening the States General. During the first half of the sixteenth century the States General were not once summoned, unless the designation of States be accorded to one or two convocations partaking rather of the character of "Assemblies of Notables," and intended merely to assist in extricating the monarch from temporary embarrassment.[20] The repeated wars of Louis the Twelfth, of Francis the First, and of Henry the Second were waged without any reference of the questions of their expediency and of the mode of conducting them to the tribunal of popular opinion. Thousands of brave Frenchmen found bloody graves beyond the Alps; Francis the First fell into the hands of his enemies, and after a weary captivity with difficulty regained his freedom; a new faith arose in France, threatening to subvert existing ecclesiastical institutions; yet in the midst of all this bloodshed, confusion and perplexity the people were left unconsulted.[21] From the accession of Charles the Eighth, in 1483, to that of Charles the Ninth, in 1560, the history of representative government in France is almost a complete blank. So long was the period during which the States General were suspended, that, when at length it was deemed advisable to convene them again, the chancellor, in his opening address, felt compelled to enter into explanations respecting the nature and functions of a body which perhaps not a man living remembered to have seen in session.[22] Yet, while the desuetude into which had fallen the laudable custom of holding the States every year, or, at least, on occasion of any important matter for deliberation, might properly be traced to the flood of ambition and pride which had inundated the world, and to the inordinate covetousness of kings,[23] there were not wanting considerations to mitigate the disappointment of the people. Chief among them, doubtless, in the view of shrewd observers, was the fact that the assembling of the States was the invariable prelude to an increase of taxation, and that never had they met without benefiting the king's exchequer at the expense of the purses of his subjects.[24]

[Sidenote: The endurance of the Tiers Etat.]

[Sidenote: Absolutism of the crown.]

Meanwhile the nation bore with exemplary patience the accumulated burdens under which it staggered. Natives and foreigners alike were lost in admiration of its wonderful powers of endurance. No one suspected that a terrible retribution for this same people's wrongs might one day overtake the successor of a long line of kings, each of whom had added his portion to the crushing load. The Emperor Maximilian was accustomed to divert himself at the expense of the French people. "The king of France," said he, "is a king of asses; there is no weight that can be laid upon his subjects which they will not bear without a murmur."[25] The warrior and historian Rabutin congratulated the monarchs of France upon God's having given them, in obedience, the best and most faithful people in the whole world.[26] The Venetian, Matteo Dandolo, declared to the Doge and Senate that the king might with propriety regard as his own all the money in France, for, such was the incomparable kindness of the people, that whatever he might ask for in his need was very gladly brought to him.[27] It was not strange, perhaps, that the ruler of subjects so exemplary in their eagerness to replenish his treasury as soon as it gave evidence of being exhausted, came to take about the same view of the matter. Accordingly, it is related of Francis the First that, being asked by his guest, Charles the Fifth, when the latter was crossing France on his way to suppress the insurrection of Ghent, what revenue he derived from certain cities he had passed through, the king promptly, replied: "Ce que je veux"—"What I please."[28]

[Sidenote: Fruits of the abasement of the people.]

Yet it must be noted, in passing, that the studied abasement of the Tiers Etat had already begun to bear some fruit that should have alarmed every patriotic heart. It was, as we have seen, impossible to obtain good French infantry except from Gascony and some other border provinces. The place that should have been held by natives was filled by Germans and Swiss. What was the reason? Simply that the common people had lost the consciousness of their manhood, in consequence of the degraded position into which the king, and the privileged classes, imitating his example, had forced them. "Because of their desire to rule the people with a rod of iron," says Dandolo, "the gentry of the kingdom have deprived them of arms. They dare not even carry a stick, and are more submissive to their superiors than dogs!"[29] No wonder that all efforts of Francis to imitate the armies of free states, by instituting legions of arquebusiers, proved fruitless.[30] Add to this that trade was held in supreme contempt,[31] and the picture is certainly sufficiently dark.

[Sidenote: Checks upon the king's authority.]

Yet, while, through the absence of any effectual barrier to the exercise of his good pleasure, the king's authority was ultimately unrestricted, it must be confessed that there existed, in point of fact, some powerful checks, rendering the abuse of the royal prerogative, for the most part, neither easy nor expedient. Parliament, the municipal corporations, the university, and the clergy, weak as they often proved in a direct struggle with the crown, nevertheless exerted an influence that ought not to be overlooked. The most headstrong prince hesitated to disregard the remonstrances of any one of these bodies, and their united protest sometimes led to the abandonment of schemes of great promise for the royal treasury. It is true that parliament, university, and chartered borough owed their existence and privileges to the royal will, and that the power that created could also destroy. But time had invested with a species of sanctity the venerable institutions established by monarchs long since dead, and the utmost stretch of royal displeasure went not in its manifestation further than the mere threat to strip parliament or university of its privileges, or, at most, the arrest and temporary imprisonment of the more obnoxious judges or scholars.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of Paris]

The Parliament of Paris was the legitimate successor of that assembly in which, in the earlier stage of the national existence, the great vassals came together to render homage to the lord paramount and aid him by their deliberations. This feudal parliament was transformed into a judicial parliament toward the end of the thirteenth century. With the change of functions, the chief crown officers were admitted to seats in the court. Next, the introduction of a written procedure, and the establishment of a more complicated legislation, compelled the illiterate barons and the prelates to call in the assistance of graduates of the university, acquainted with the art of writing and skilled in law. These were appointed by the king to the office of counsellors.[32] In 1302, parliament, hitherto migratory, following the king in his journeys, was made stationary at Paris. Its sessions were fixed at two in each year, held at Easter and All Saints respectively. The judicial body was subdivided into several "chambers," according to the nature of the cases upon which it was called to act.

[Sidenote: Becomes the supreme court.]

From this time the Parliament of Paris assumed appellate jurisdiction over all France, and became the supreme court of justice. But the burden of prolonged sessions, and the necessity now imposed upon the members of residing at least four months out of every year in the capital, proved an irksome restraint both to prelates and to noblemen. Their attendance, therefore, began now to be less constant. As early as in 1320 the bishops and other ecclesiastical officers were excused, on the ground that their duty to their dioceses and sacred functions demanded their presence elsewhere. From the general exemption the Bishop of Paris and the Abbot of St. Denis alone were excluded, on account of their proximity to the seat of the court. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the members, taking advantage of the weak reign of Charles the Sixth, made good their claim to a life-tenure in their offices.[33]

[Sidenote: Provincial parliaments.]

The rapid increase of cases claiming the attention of the Parliament of Paris suggested the erection of similar tribunals in the chief cities of the provinces added to the original estates of the crown. Before the accession of Francis the First a provincial parliament had been instituted at Toulouse, with jurisdiction over the extensive domain once subject to the illustrious counts of that city; a second, at Grenoble, for Dauphiny; a third, at Bordeaux, for the province of Guyenne recovered from the English; a fourth, at Dijon, for the newly acquired Duchy of Burgundy; a fifth, at Rouen, to take the place of the inferior "exchequer" which had long had its seat there; and a sixth, at Aix-en-Provence, for the southeast of France.[34]

[Sidenote: Claim to the right of remonstrance.]

To their judicial functions, the Parliament of Paris, and to a minor degree the provincial parliaments, had insensibly added other functions purely political. In order to secure publicity for their edicts, and equally with the view of establishing the authenticity of documents purporting to emanate from the crown, the kings of France had early desired the insertion of all important decrees in the parliamentary records. The registry was made on each occasion by express order of the judges, but with no idea on their part that this form was essential to the validity of a royal ordinance. Presently, however, the novel theory was advanced that parliament had the right of refusing to record an obnoxious law, and that, without the formal recognition of parliament, no edict could be allowed to affect the decisions of the supreme or of any inferior tribunal.

[Sidenote: Indulgence of the crown.]

[Sidenote: The Chancellor's oath.]

In the exercise or this assumed prerogative, the judges undertook to send a remonstrance to the king, setting forth the pernicious consequences that might be expected to flow from the proposed measure if put into execution. However unfounded in history, the claim of the Parliament of Paris appears to have been viewed with indulgence by monarchs most of whom were not indisposed to defer to the legal knowledge of the counsellors, nor unwilling to enhance the consideration of the venerable and ancient body to which the latter belonged. In all cases, however, the final responsibility devolved upon the sovereign. Whenever the arguments and advice of parliament failed to convince him, the king proceeded in person to the audience-chamber of the refractory court, and there, holding a lit-de-justice, insisted upon the immediate registration, or else sent his express command by one of his most trusty servants. The judges, in either case, were forced to succumb—often, it must be admitted, with a very bad grace—and admit the law to their records. We shall soon have occasion to note one of the most striking instances of this unequal contest between king and parliament, in which power rather than right or learning won the day. In spite, however, of occasional checks, parliament manfully and successfully maintained its right to throw obstacles in the way of hasty or inconsiderate legislation. In this it was often efficiently assisted by the Chancellor of France, the highest judicial officer of the crown, to whom, on his assuming office, an oath was administered containing a very explicit promise to exercise the right of remonstrance with the king before affixing the great seal of state to any unjust or unreasonable royal ordinance.[35]

[Sidenote: Abuses in the administration of justice.]

Not that either the Parliament of Paris or the provincial parliaments were free of grave defects deserving the severe animadversion of impartial observers. It was probably no worse with the Parliament of Bordeaux than with its sister courts;[36] yet, when Charles the Ninth visited that city in 1564, honest Chancellor L'Hospital seized the opportunity to tell the judges some of their failings. The royal ordinances were not observed. Parliamentary decisions ranked above commands of the king. There were divisions and violence. In the civil war some judges had made themselves captains. Many of them were avaricious, timid, lazy and inattentive to their duties. Their behavior and their dress were "dissolute." They had become negligent in judging, and had thrown the burden of prosecuting offences upon the shoulders of the king's attorney, originally appointed merely to look after the royal domain. They had become the servants of the nobility for hire. There was not a lord within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Bordeaux but had his own chancellor in the court to look after his interests.[37] It was sufficiently characteristic that the same judicial body of which such things were said to its face (and which neither denied their truth nor grew indignant), should have been so solicitous for its dignity as to send the monarch, upon his approach to the city, an earnest petition that its members should not be constrained to kneel when his Majesty entered their court-room! To which the latter dryly responded, "their genuflexion would not make him any less a king than he already was."[38]

[Sidenote: The University of Paris.]

Among the forces that tended to limit the arbitrary exercise of the royal authority, the influence of the University of Paris is entitled to a prominent place. Nothing had added more lustre to the rising glory of the capital than the possession of the magnificent institution of learning, the foundation of which was lost in the mist of remote antiquity. Older than the race of kings who had for centuries held the French sceptre, the university owed its origin, if we are to believe the testimony of its own annals, to the munificent hand of Charlemagne, in the beginning of the ninth century. Careful historical criticism must hesitate to accept as conclusive the slender proof offered in support of the story.[39] It is, perhaps, safer to regard one of the simple schools instituted at an early period in connection with cathedrals and monasteries as having contained the humble germ from which the proud university was slowly developed. But, by the side of this original foundation there had doubtless grown up the schools of private instructors, and these had acquired a certain prominence before the confluence of scholars to Paris from all quarters rendered necessary an attempt to introduce order into the complicated system, by the formation of that union of all the teachers and scholars to which the name of universitas was ultimately given.

If the origin of the University of Paris, like that of the greater number of human institutions, was insignificant when viewed in the light of its subsequent growth, the meagreness of the early course of instruction was almost incredible to those who, in an age of richer mental acquisitions, listened to the prelections of its numerous and learned doctors. The Trivium and the Quadrivium constituted the whole cycle of human knowledge. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were embraced in the one; music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the other. He was indeed a prodigy of erudition whose comprehensive intellect had mastered the details of these, the seven liberal arts, or, to use a familiar line of the period,

Qui tria, qui septem, qui omne scibile novit.

But the ignorant pedagogues of the eleventh century gave place, in the early part of the twelfth, to instructors of real merit—to Peter Abelard, among others, and to his pupil Peter Lombard, the fame of whose lectures attracted to Paris great crowds of youth eager to become proficient in philosophy and

[Sidenote: The four nations.]

Hitherto there had been but one faculty—the Faculty of Arts; but among the students a distribution into four "nations" had been effected. The Nation of France embraced the students coming from the royal dominions, which then comprised a limited territory, with Paris as its capital, together with the students of Italy, Spain, and the east. The Nation of Picardy consisted of students from the province of that name and from the neighboring County of Flanders. The Nation of Normandy received youths belonging to the rich provinces of Normandy and Brittany, and to the west. The Nation of England gathered those who came from the British Isles, as well as from the extensive territories in southwestern France long held by the kings of England. After the reconquest of Guyenne, however, the German students became the controlling element in the fourth nation, and the designation was changed to the Nation of Germany. The Rector of the university and the four Procurators of the nations were entrusted with the administration of the general interests of the vast scholastic community.

[Sidenote: The faculties.]

[Sidenote: Chancellor and rector.]

With the rise of new branches of science to contest the supremacy of the old, the institution of other faculties was called for. The demand was not conceded without a determined struggle of so serious a character as to require the intervention of two popes for its settlement. Nevertheless, before the end of the thirteenth century, the three new faculties of theology, medicine, and law had assumed their places by the side of the four original nations. The faculties were represented in the rector's council by three Deans, invested with power equal to that enjoyed by the procurators of the nations. While the rector, always chosen from the faculty of arts, was the real head of this republic of letters in all that concerned its inner life and management, the honorable privilege of conferring the degrees that gave the right to teach belonged to the chancellor of the university.[40] The former, elected every three months, began and ended his office with solemn processions, the first to invoke the blessing of heaven upon his labors, the second to render thanks for their successful termination. The chancellor, holding office for life, was an ecclesiastic of the church of Paris, originally the bishop or some one appointed by him, who, if he enjoyed less direct control over the scholars in their studies, was yet the chief censor of their morals,[41] and the representative of the university in its dealings with foreign bodies, and especially with the Roman See.[42]

[Sidenote: The Sorbonne.]

No other mediaeval seat of learning attained so enviable a reputation as Paris for completeness of theological training. From all parts of Christendom students resorted to it as to the most abundant and the purest fountain of sound learning. In 1250, Robert de Sorbonne, the private confessor of Louis the Ninth, emulating the munificence of previous patrons of letters, founded a college intended to facilitate the education of secular students of theology. The college took the name of its author, and, becoming famous for the ability of its instructors, the Sorbonne soon engrossed within its walls almost the entire course of theological teaching given in the University of Paris. Although the students in the colleges of Navarre and Plessis devoted themselves to the acquisition of the same science, they had little public instruction save that for which they resorted to the Sorbonne. By reason of the prominence thus gained as the seat of the principal instruction in theology, the Sorbonne became synonymous with the theological faculty itself.[43]

[Sidenote: Its great authority.]

A body of theologians of admitted eminence necessarily spoke with authority. In France the decisions of the Sorbonne were accepted as final upon almost all questions affecting the doctrine and practice of the Church. Abroad its opinions were esteemed of little less weight than the deliberate judgments of synods. Difficulties in church and state were referred to it for solution. In the age of the reformation the Sorbonne was invited to pronounce upon the truth or falsity of the propositions maintained by Martin Luther, and, a few years later, upon the validity of the grounds of the divorce sought by Henry the Eighth of England. But, unhappily, the reputation of the faculty was tarnished by scholastic bigotry. Slavish attachment to the past had destroyed freedom of thought. With a species of inconsistency not altogether without a parallel in history, the very body which had been active in the promotion of science during the Middle Ages assumed the posture of resistance the moment that the advocates of substantial reform urged the necessity of immediate action. Abuses which had provoked the indignation of Gerson, once Chancellor of the University of Paris, and employed the skilful pen of the bold Rector Nicholas de Clemangis, met with no word of condemnation from the new generation of theologians.

Such was the Sorbonne of the beginning of the sixteenth century, when intriguing doctors, such as Beda and Quercu, ruled in its deliberations. An enemy of liberal studies as well as of the "new doctrines," the faculty of theology was as ready to attack Erasmus for his devotion to ancient literature, or Jacques Lefevre for establishing the existence of the "three Marys," as to denounce the Bishop of Meaux for favoring "Lutheran" preachers in his diocese. Against all innovators in church or state, the sentiments of the Sorbonne, which it took no pains to conceal, were that "their impious and shameless arrogance must be restrained by chains, by censures—nay, by fire and flame—rather than vanquished by argument!"[44]

[Sidenote: Number of students.]

Meanwhile, in the external marks of prosperity the University of Paris was still in its prime at the period of which I speak. The colleges, clustered together in the southern quarter of the city—the present Quartier Latin—were so numerous and populous that this portion continued for many years after to be distinguished as l' Universite.[45] The number of students, it is true, had visibly diminished since one hundred years before. The crowd of youth in attendance was no longer so great as in 1409, when, according to a contemporary, the head of a scholastic procession to the Church of Saint Denis had already reached the sacred shrine before the rector had left the Church of the Mathurins in the Rue Saint Jacques, a point full six miles distant.[46] Yet the report of Giustiniano, in 1535, stated it as the current belief that the university still had twenty-five thousand students in attendance, although this seemed to be an exaggerated estimate. "For the most part," he added, "they are young, for everybody, however poor he may be, learns to read and write."[47] Another ambassador, writing eleven years later, represents the students, now numbering sixteen or twenty thousand, as extremely poor. Their instructors, he tells us, received very modest salaries; yet, so great was the honor attaching to the post of teacher within the university walls, that the competition for professorial chairs was marvellously active.[48]

The influence of the clergy fell little short of that of the university in moderating the arbitrary impulses of the monarch.

[Sidenote: The Gallican liberties.]

The Gallican Church had for many centuries been distinguished for a manly defence of its liberties against the encroachments of the Papal court. Tenacious of the maintenance of doctrinal unity with the See of Rome, the French prelates early met the growing assumption of the Popes with determined courage. At the suggestion of the clergy, and with their full concurrence, more than one French king adopted stringent regulations intended to protect the kingdom from becoming the prey of foreigners. Church and State were equally interested in the successful prosecution of a warfare carried on, so far as the French were concerned, in a strictly defensive manner. The Papal treasury, under guise of annats, laid claim to the entire income of the bishopric or other benefice for the first year after each new appointment. It seized upon the revenues of vacant ecclesiastical offices, which the king specially affected. Every bull or brief needed to secure induction into office—and the number of these articles was almost unlimited—was procured at a heavy expense. Further sums were exacted for pronouncing a dispensation in favor of those appointees whom youth or some other canonical impediment incapacitated for the acceptance and discharge of the requisite functions.

[Sidenote: Objects of the Gallican party.]

The main objects of both crown and clergy were, consequently, to secure the kingdom from the disastrous results of the interference of Italians in the domestic affairs of France; to preserve the treasure of the realm from exhaustion resulting from the levy of arbitrary imposts fixed by irresponsible aliens, and exacted through the terrors of ecclesiastical penalties; to prevent the right of election to lucrative livings from falling into the hands of those who would use the privilege only as a means of acquiring riches; and to rescue clergymen themselves from being hurried away for trial beyond the confines of their native land, and possibly from suffering hopeless confinement in Roman dungeons. In a word, it was the aim of the Gallican party to prove that "the government of the church is not a despotism."[49]

[Sidenote: Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.]

It is a somewhat anomalous circumstance that the first decided step in repressing the arrogant claims of the Papal See was taken by a monarch whose singular merits have been deemed worthy of canonization by the Roman Church. Louis the Ninth had witnessed with alarm the rapid strides of the Papacy toward universal dominion. His pride was offended by the pretension of the Pontiff to absolute superiority; his sovereign rights were assailed when taxes were levied in France at the pleasure of a foreign priest and prince. He foresaw that this abuse was likely to take deep root unless promptly met by a formal declaration placing the rights of the French monarch and nation in their true light. For this reason he issued in 1268 a solemn edict, which, as emanating from the unconstrained will of the king, took the name of the "Pragmatic Sanction of Saint Louis."

The preamble of this famous ordinance, upon the authenticity of which doubts have been unnecessarily cast,[50] declares the object of the king to be to secure the safety and tranquillity of the church of his realm, the advancement of divine worship, the salvation of the souls of Christ's faithful people, and the attainment of the favor and help of Almighty God. To his sole jurisdiction and protection had France ever been subject, and so did Louis desire it to remain. The provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction were directed chiefly to guarding the freedom of election and of collation to benefices, and to prohibiting the imposition of any form of taxes by the Pope upon ecclesiastical property in France, save by previous consent of the prince and clergy.[51]

In this brief document had been laid the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, not under the form of novel legislation, but of a summary of previous usage.

[Sidenote: Philip the Fair and Boniface.]

Political reasons, not long after the death of Louis, gave new vigor to the policy of opposition to which this king had pledged France. His grandson, the resolute Philip the Fair, found fresh incitement in the extravagant conduct of a contemporary Pope, Boniface the Eighth. The bold ideas advanced by Hildebrand in the eleventh, and carried into execution by Innocent the Third in the thirteenth century, were wrought into the very texture of the soul of Boniface, and could not be concealed, in spite of the altered condition of mediaeval society. Intolerant, headstrong, and despotic, he undertook to exercise a theocratic rule, and commanded contending monarchs to lay down their arms, and submit their disputes to his arbitrament. To such a summons Philip was not inclined to submit. The crafty and unscrupulous prince, whose contempt for divine law was evidenced by his shameless practice of injustice, whose coffers were filled indifferently by the confiscation of the rich spoils of the commanderies of the Templars, and by recklessly debasing the national currency, did not hesitate to engage in a contest with the most presumptuous of Popes. He appealed to the States General, and all three orders indignantly repudiated the suggestion that their country had ever stood to the Papacy in the relation of a fief. The disastrous example of the English John Lackland had found no imitator on the southern side of the channel. The Pope was declared a heretic. Emissaries of Louis seized him in his native city of Anagni, within the very bounds of the "Patrimony of St. Peter," and the rough usage to which he was then subjected hastened his death. His successors on the pontifical throne proved somewhat more tractable.

[Sidenote: The Popes at Avignon.]

During his short and unimportant pontificate, Benedict the Eleventh restored to the chapters of cathedrals the right of electing their own bishops. Upon his death, Philip secured the elevation to the pontifical dignity of an ecclesiastic wholly devoted to French interests, the facile Clement the Fifth, who, in return for the honor conferred upon him, removed the seat of the Papacy to Avignon. Here for the seventy years of the so-called "Babylonish Captivity," the Popes continued to reside, too completely subject to the influence of the French monarchs to dream of resuming their tone of defiance, but scarcely less exacting than before of homage from other rulers. In fact, the burden of the pecuniary exactions of the Popes rather grew than diminished with the change from Rome to Avignon, and with the institution of rival claimants to the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his court, but recognized as legitimate by only a portion of Christendom. The devices for drawing tribute from all quarters were multiplied to an almost insupportable extent. So effectual did they prove, that no pontiff, perhaps, ever left at his death a more enormous accumulation of treasure than one of the Popes of Avignon, John the Twenty-second. Much of this wealth was derived from the rich provinces of France.