opinions were not well fixed or fully developed, and many were seeking to conciliate the more profound doctrines of "Christianity with the institutions of the existing church."* The startling fact of its establishment, during that time of intellectual revival, indicates the attitude of a threatened, or even desperate, hierarchy. No doubt the sad events that happened at Paris, and at Meaux, were part of the general policy, so far as the French King, and his advisers, concurred in it.† Men do not, however, speak only by the mouth. You might even destroy the hand, while the work of the pen it had held escaped you. The Church made no such blunder. Customhouse officers and booksellers were enjoined to notify writings and printed books to the Inquisitors. There arose, soon after 1543, an index of prohibited books. The example was set outside Italy, Louvain and Paris taking the lead. Other places followed; and in 1559 a formal publication was made at Rome. It would be childish, indeed, to cry over the loss to literature. The loss is to man himself, who has suffered spiritual guides to obliterate the vivid thoughts of his own ancestors. It was even made a matter of conscience for private persons to denounce forbidden books, and do their best towards their destruction. One instance of successful suppression, notwithstanding the new power of the printing press, seems to have been that of a very remarkable book. It may have been both theologically unorthodox and argumentatively wrong. No man can judge. For Ranke tells us, that not one copy among many thousands, of the work "On the Benefits bestowed by Christ," survived its proscription and can now be found. One is appalled to think what knowledge and what ideas, in earlier ages, may have been summarily destroyed in manuscript, before the development of printing required an Index. A notable example of the Church's condition, in both general and particular features, during this period, is furnished by the Diocese of Meaux. At no great distance eastward from Paris, nor very far from Lorraine and the Low Countries, that district seemed marked out for all the troubles of war, for easy interchange of European ideas, and for a chequered history. The town, again, cut in two by a great bend of the river Marne, was divided against itself: no bad type of what might occur there in any dispute-civil, military, or religious. The southern portion, named after the great market there * History of the Popes. Vol. I, p. 159. + Compare notes 17, 24, hereafter. situated, was a fortress in itself; had been defended by the nobles in the peasant war, when the Jacquerie held the town; was now a nursery of Gospellers; and, some time after the terrible death of the Fourteen, we find the Grand Marché a stronghold of Pieds Nus or Huguenots. It was subsequently the scene of various episodes in the religious war. The elements of discord were, however, at Meaux as elsewhere, deeper than any geographical features. Considerably before the Huguenot League, Meaux was the arena of a bitter and too memorable religious contest. That double movement of doctrine and discipline, which, in the churches under Roman influence, led to persecution, was early astir at Meaux. Indeed, one of the most interesting traits of that sad period is the way in which the double movement caused, as time went on, an apparent change in the policy of Guillaume Briçonnet, the reforming Bishop of Meaux. After a short absence on duty at Rome, he entered, in 1518, very actively on his episcopal work. This was only the next year after Luther's Wittenberg propositions against Indulgences. The bishop early showed himself both a firm disciplinarian, and a favourer of the new religious learning represented by Lefèvre. The condition of the Church at Meaux, as related by the studious Benedictine Dom Toussaints du Plessis, and by Carro, was doubtless a type of the general laxity and abuse, and might well have staggered a more obstinate reformer than Briçonnet; though M. Jules Zeller is able to say, that, under that bishop, the Diocese was an oasis of piety in the midst of the general corruption.* It is recorded that ecclesiastical discipline had been almost ignored at Meaux. The curés hardly worked at all in their parishes, and we are told that the bishop could scarcely find resident, in the whole of his diocese, fourteen priests really capable of instructing the people and of administering the sacraments. Towards such neglect, Briçonnet, himself an apostle of duty as well as of education, showed an indignant sternness, while displaying some power of organization. Among other measures, he promptly and repeatedly admonished his clergy to reside, attaching penalties to disobedience, and thus anticipating, in his own diocese, the restoration of disciplinary canons, to be, after great opposition, solemnly and prudently adopted many years later by the Council of Trent. He also provided for the better instruction of the people, by arranging thirty-two preachers' stations in the diocese: an institution which, * François I. Paris, 1882, p. 142. Toussaints du Plessis says, remained, with some modifications, to his own day, two centuries later. One man, and that a Bishop, was not perhaps likely to clearly illustrate the tendency to form still further societies of Religieux. Yet we learn from Longpérier's " Notice héraldique. sur les Évêques de Meaux," (1876, p. 78.), that a house of the Canons regular of the order of the Holy Trinity was founded in 1533, that is, within Briçonnet's episcopacy. I know not whether he may have encouraged this fresh brotherhood, perhaps with a view to counteract the unworthy representatives of the old Franciscan rule. But, apart from new monastic institutions, it is not perhaps too fanciful, for a modern visitor to Meaux, to people for a moment that noble vaulted college in the episcopal palace, with earlier and less pretentious classes of scholars,* taught by the learned Lefèvre and his colleagues, animated by the zealous and accomplished Briçonnet, vigorous with that exercise of their talents which he expected of them, and proud of their mission to a neglected people. For Briçonnet tried to use at Meaux the learning which had lately been revived in Europe; which, indeed, moving hand in hand with a generous zeal for reform, might become its guide and moderator. The strange position this learning was itself to bring about could be, perhaps, at first as little realized by the bishop, as the future influence on the Swiss Church, and on Europe, of Farel, one of his own earlier preachers and Erasmus's future enemy, who soon became too vehement or extreme for Meaux, and had to leave. A more important, nay, probably the greatest representative of scholarship at Meaux, or in France, was Faber, [or Lefèvre,] of Étaples. A very famous teacher at Paris, he enjoyed the favour of Briçonnet and the King. A sentence of his, written so early as 1517, quoted in Whitaker's "Disputation," is gently suggestive of the young religious movement, so soon to powerfully engage Europe, and offend the priesthood. He says: The greatest part of the world now, when they pray, I know not whether they pray with the spirit, but they certainly do "not with the understanding; for they pray in a tongue "which they do not understand. Yet Paul approves most that "the faithful should pray both with the spirit and the under"standing; and those who pray so, as is the general practice, * Crespin, in opening his account of Pavannes, says: "Briçonnetus ille episcopus Mellensis, i uitio quidem in sua diœcesi scholam aperuerat Euangelio..." [Actiones, 1560, fol. 52, verso.] † Parker Society, Whitaker," p. 273. 'edify themselves but little by the prayer, and cannot edify 'others at all by their speech." His views were not agreeable to the Sorbonne. That theological college, so famous throughout Europe, was disposed to burn Lefèvre, who had differed with it on the curious question of Mary Magdalene and the three Marys. The Bishop drew him to Meaux, showed great confidence in him, and seems to have distributed within that diocese, the French translations of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament and the Psalms, which Lefèvre published from 1520 to 1525. In this year he was included in the notable proceedings against the bishop and others and though protected by a letter from the King, he quitted Meaux. Briçonnet however did not content himself with disciplinary advice to his curés, and the use of more modern instruction. The people, untaught in religion, were yet not likely to entirely neglect the ancient consecrated days. They were usually accustomed to certain public dances on Sundays and the feasts of the Virgin, which entertainments seem to have been thought not conducive to morality. The people were also familar with a somewhat debased form of the mystery plays: that curious and popular kind of drama, which, based on man's liking for supernatural or divine subjects, has the widest possible stage, and the most varied opportunities. In our day the religious drama still survives in strange and divers forms, embracing the grotesque, the intellectual, and the impressive showing such different specimens, as perhaps the children's Punch and Judy show, certainly Goethe's dramatic poem of Faust, and the solemn though doubtless painful, Oberammergau performances. Briçonnet found the phase of mystery play then favoured at Meaux far from edifying, and took measures at different times to stop these and the dances respectively. Was there, however, no sort of religious ministration at Meaux apart from the Bishop's importations of men and ideas, and the fourteen qualified pastors for two hundred parishes? Here, again, Meaux is an admirable example of the European Churches at large for there were several societies of regulars; and especially active in asserting their claims were the Religieux of the order of St. Francis, called the Cordeliers. They had a house at Meaux from which they issued, not only to beg, but to claim some at least of the many pulpits neglected by the parochial clergy. The stern Franciscan rule of poverty had degenerated here into a method that would have made St. Francis weep. It had become a mean peddling VOL. V.-NO. I. B of Church Services, together with systematic quests at holy periods, and from the richer congregations. The Franciscans seem at once to earn the displeasure of Bishop Briçonnet, the historian Crespin, and the Benedictine Dom Toussaints du Plessis. It is perhaps unfortunate that Crespin, generally so well corroborated in this story, has given us no details of the Meaux Franciscans, contenting himself with very general though severe allusion to them and their important action. For he attributes it, perhaps rather by surmise than by knowledge, to Satan himself. But we ought to remember that Crespin lived at a time of real and startling events, when thoughtful men of various opinions boldly introduced theology and demonology into the actual interpretation of life. It seems true enough, however, that these poor Religieux did preach in their own way, sufficiently to lay claim to the right; though their conduct was disfavoured by the bishop, their view of life, like that of so many disciples, a mockery of their founder's idea, and their teaching we may fairly suppose on a par with their church discipline. There prevailed, then, between the bishop and the Franciscans of Meaux, that long contest mentioned by Crespin, and related with so much more detail by Toussaints du Plessis. It well illustrates the great and general quarrel between regular and secular clergy. The Bishop forbade these men to preach, though not to beg, and prohibited the representation of their Saint with the Stigmata; while they persisted in their claim to preach without the episcopal licence. The dispute reached its acme in the year 1525 to 1526; when, in the king's absence from France, the bishop and several other persons were made the subjects of legal proceedings before the Parlement de Paris on charges akin to heresy. Some of his important subordinates left Meaux, and Briçonnet himself was remitted for interrogation before certain counsellors. Whether his aristocratic and ecclesiastical position, the royal favour, his doctrinal orthodoxy, his fidelity to discipline, or any concession to the force majeure, saved him from the modified retirement of Lefèvre and of Roussel, he at any rate did. remain at Meaux to continue his reformatory work, and to see arise a fresh and dismal phase of discipline in which the bishop would now and then have some incidental duty whether nominal or official. Upon a story of this kind it is easy to found a charge of inconstancy, especially where a great name is concerned. Crespin, D'Aubigné, and Baird comment unfavourably on the bishop's change of position, the last named allowing |