preferment. Useful servants or the nominees of women were among the recipients. The natural odium however, in which a theological College like the Sorbonne held the reformers, needed no stimulus. Indeed the University partizans received some check from Francis in their rancorous but at first unsuccessful persecution of Lefèvre.* Furthermore the interest of many nobles told for the clerical party. Laymen claimed lucrative rights within the Church and, entertaining no disposition to forego them, would not wish her to be overreformed. The populace itself which could, like the King, tolerate or even enjoy amusing disparagement of living monks and priests, might yet be counted on to frantically resent attacks on images or contempt of the Mass. The timid were also disturbed by perpetual wars, the incursion of soi-disants Lutheran Germans into Lorraine, (condemned by Luther,) and lawless visits from numerous bodies of Italian and French soldiers and vagabonds. The social condition of that time in France, and the world, favoured a general feeling of unrest and suspicion. We must bear in mind that nervous but strong preservative instinct which, though it often saves a nation, yet sometimes roused into a frenzy promotes misfortune.+

The varying treatment of the French reformers depended then on the divers combinations of these several elements, on the ever-changing posture of external politics, on the activity of the reformers themselves, and on the complexion which all those circumstances wore in the view of Francis, the Queen Mother, and their advisers.

This thirty years' reign may be divided into three nearly equal parts. During the first, 1515 to 1525, little or no severity was used by the government. The second was marked by some executions, but the legal machine seems to have been not then in full working order. The third began with the terrible year of the placards (1534-5), saw the gradual arrangement of procedure, and concluded with the massacre of the Vaudois, the execution of the Fourteen of Meaux, and others.

Compare Crowe's History of France (1860), Vol. II, pp. 574, 578, etc. Michelet, Vol. VIII, pp. 215, 216. Baird, Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. I, pp. 71, 72. Toussaints du Plessis, Vol. II, p. 282. Compare also Note 18, hereafter.

+See Haag: preface. Sismondi, Vol. XVI, pp. 197, 235, 236, 345, 359, 425. The "Journal," pp. 176 etc., 201, 232, 244, 245, 249, 280. Michelet, Vol. VIII, 266. Compare also Note 24 hereafter.

During the first of these three periods, the French Court seems not to have apprehended any great danger to the Church. No doubt the King himself was a great promoter of the Renaissance in France, and favoured that heterogeneous party of mental illumination which, opposing fanatical ignorance as such, promised then to shed a glittering lustre on the reign. So little anxiety did he feel for the Church's position, that in 1524 he even allowed in his presence the acting of some mystery play, wherein the Pope and monks were treated with derision. However, the disastrous battle of Pavia, the King's short captivity, and troubles in Suabia and Lorraine, put the country in panic. Louise, now Regent, consulted with the Sorbonne, the Parlement and the Pope. This spirited woman sought to divide the enemies of France, obtaining in 1525 a defensive alliance with England. But she saw also in a papal alliance a chance of deliverance for her son and support for France. The Church at that time, though no absolute arbiter of Europe's fate, could powerfully assist either Francis I or his great rival the Emperor Charles. The odium theologicum was let loose, not to be easily chained again. Thus began the second period of the reign. The Parlement, sensitive as to its own authority, agreed to the appointment of a special mixed commission against heretics; and Louise ordered the publication of Clement VII's bull in that business, which Michelet condemns as not less cruel than the Roman Inquisition. Another historian ejaculates:-" Triste émulation entre Rome et le gallicanisme." Francis I was himself indeed no certain ally for the Pope; but later on in this second period the outward submission of a proud nation to the Roman See was exemplified at the Marseilles conference. For in 1533 King Francis, his sons and his nobles, there greeted Pope Clement VII with a pompous servility that would surprise or amuse the most exacting of barbarous tyrants.*

In such a state of things there suddenly appeared the placards of 1534. This event acted like a brusque declaration of war in the religious world of France. The document, printed at Neufchatel and distributed about the streets and crossroads of Paris, plainly attacks the priesthood with the Mass as idolatrous and vicious, and expounds a distinct doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Whereas Briçonnet had directed men's eyes to certain ancient authorities, the present propagandist

Cf generally, Note 17, hereafter; also Haag, preface, and pièces justificatives; Michelet, Vol. VIII, p. 371; Martin, Histoire de France, (1878), Vol. VIII, pp. 151, 152; Sismondi, Vol. XVI, pp. 230 etc., 404, 405.

ventures some striking conclusions therefrom. One copy is said to have been affixed to the King's own door. Indignant and no doubt startled, he at once reverted to or reindorsed the policy for some time active, and but lately moderated within his kingdom. The pomp at Marseilles was now followed in 1535 by a more gloomy state procession in Paris. King Francis set an example of devotion to the sacrament of the altar by attending the Host, head bare and torch in hand, on a day when six heretics suffered death. Sismondi's assertion that the king witnessed their actual execution is doubted by Michelet. That point is of less historical importance than the extravagant injunctions to inform and to destroy, which he delivered after dinner. Henceforward a succession of edicts deal severely with the heretics, though with divers degrees of leniency and oppression. The accomplished Du Bellay, the mystical Marguerite and the German protestant princes no doubt from time to time inclined the King to mercy; while the increasingly powerful Spanish party, grouped around Montmorency and the Dauphin, were on the side of an inflamed clergy little restrained by a now corrupted Parlement. The Parlement did however refuse to register an extraordinary edict of the King, (after the Placards), in suppression of printing, for which the Sorbonne had even before petitioned. To allay distrust of the Church, or to attain the success of a punitive policy, it was needful to enlist the full co-operation of the French Courts of Justice. Eventually in 1540 the noted edict of Fontainebleau, containing a formal recital that the king wishes to satisfy his duty and title of " très chrestien," established a course of procedure for the Royal courts in set terms. Unwilling officials were exhorted to prosecute zealously, and were threatened with penalties. Heresy was declared to contain within itself High Treason "divine et humaine," and sedition. Thus a grotesque ecclesiastical discipline was regularly enforced on laymen by the French courts of law. Yet it is something to the credit of the invalid King that, notwithstanding all the tragedies of his reign, his death in 1547 is said to have caused five thousand persons to seek safety at Geneva. The celebrated chamber known as the "Chambre Ardente" does not seem to have been organized till 1547-8.+

444.

Sismondi, XVI, 424-426; Michelet, VIII, 411-413; The "Journal" pp. 442

+ Compare Weiss, La Chambre Ardente, (1889,) LXXII, footnote. See also note 105 a. hereafter.

But what was the course of events at Meaux in particular which in 1546 brought that congregation under the harsh discipline of torture and death? It seems that, whether Briçonnet would approve it or not, a school of thought had early arisen at Meaux, of which, about twelve years after his death, this church was the result. Even in Briçonnet's and Lefèvre's time there were held colloquies of wool-carders and other supposed ignorant people in the very cathedral itself after Roussel's discourses or readings there. We can hardly think that such an assembly survived the proceedings of 1525, at any rate in that building. Indeed the "Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises réformées" dates the early dissipation of that body at 1523. But the effect of the preachings of Roussel and others at Meaux was that very shortly, according to Haag, "elles 'convertirent la plupart des ouvriers des nombreuses fabriques "de Meaux." One cannot lay down for certain the exact form of doctrine to which these were converted. Some guide is found in the general religious movement then overspreading Europe, which took so special and distinct a form at Geneva and Strasburg. With this latter place at least Meaux was in some correspondence, and a letter of 1525, written by Roussel at Strasburg to Le Sueur at Meaux, gives an important indication of the sacramental opinions then probably engaging both communities. We have also the contemporary case of the young scholar Pavanes, who suffered death for some specific doctrine of the Lord's Supper, probably the same. The cases of Denis de Rieux and of Jean LeClerc give further indications. Again, the " Bourgeois de Paris," while speaking of the year 1526, comments on the great spread of Lutheran heresy at Meaux and gives some slight detail. He mentions also a native of Meaux who died for repudiating the worship of the Virgin in 1528. Upon a review of the evidence we find that about this time there were persons at Meaux who accepted, at least, views so characteristic of the Protestant or Evangelical movement as :-one Divine Sacrifice, repudiation of the mass and of transubstantiation, as well as of purgatory, indulgences, prayers for the departed or to the Virgin Mary, images, holy water, and the Pope's authority.*

History says that, later on, congregations of reformers were in existence at different places. The Meaux Gospellers had apparently a sort of preeminent fame; and the so-called luthériens de Meaux" might soon become not only proverbial as such in France, but possibly known to the world as "Journal" pp. 277, 375. See also Notes 21, 29, hereafter.

organizers of a metropolitan church. The aspirations noticed by Crespin in his account of the Meaux reformers imply that that town was looked on as the centre from whence a light should spread over all France.

*

These Gospellers, who came occasionally upon the stage of history as sufferers for protesting against Mass or Pope, whose own various meetings were held here and there, but in secret or by the favour of some rich or great man, these Gospellers were I suppose without any real organization, and, while condemning the decay and abuse of the church's ministry, had as yet no set scheme of discipline among themselves. Can we not easily picture the state of things at Meaux itself, among men whose ideas were, with all their enthusiasm, still perhaps unsettled in some points of doctrine, who also, when met together for worship, would choose on each occasion for their minister him who seemed to know most scripture? A congregation so incoherent and irregular was, unless composed of very sober minds, obviously open to all the risks of anarchy, disintegration and ruin. We know not at what time Étienne Mangin the Lorrainer went to Meaux. Lorraine was an early field of religious persecution, Meaux an early centre of religious activity. Mangin was probably related to a former curé at Meaux of that name, one of Briçonnet's readers, and to Faron Mangin of Meaux whom Crespin praises for his work at Orleans. He is described by Toussaints du Plessis as "Cardeur de laine"; and, since the family history attributes to him property at Meaux, and is corroborated by the fact now very well ascertained that he had a house at the Grand Marché, with a long garden abutting on the ramparts, we must suppose that he was either retired from business, or else a master employing some of that heretical trade of wool-carders. He may well have been a type of those well instructed men of business, who, combining an ardent energy with firm opinions and practical sense, have at different periods of history moulded its course. It is clear that in a large upper room at his house was in 1546 collected a congregation from town and country, freshly organized on the model of the Strasburg Refugee Church, to attend the ministrations of Pierre LeClerc. This Pierre, brother of Jean LeClerc, was well-read in French books of theology, and was, after fasting and prayer, solemnly appointed to the permanent superintendence of this little Church's worship. The discipline necessary Compare the recitals to the Edict of Fontainebleau, 1540, Haag, La France protestante, (pièces justificatives).

*