Chapter 7

Beginning of the Church at Meaux—The Scriptures in French—The Artisans and the Bishop—Evangelical Harvest—The Epistles of St. Paul sent to the King—Lefevre and Roma—The Monks before the Bishop—The Monks before the Parliament—Briconnet gives way

The time was indeed approaching when the storm should burst upon the Reformation; but it was first to scatter a few more seeds and to gather in a few more sheaves. This city of Meaux, renowned a century and a half later by the sublime defender of the Gallican system against the autocratic pretensions of Rome, was called to be the first town of France where regenerated Christianity should establish its dominion. It was then the field on which the laborers were prodigal of their exertions and their seed, and where already the ears were falling before the reapers. Briconnet, less sunk in slumber than he had said, was animating, inspecting, and directing all. His fortune equalled his zeal; never did man devote his wealth to nobler uses, and never did such noble devotedness promise at first to bear such glorious fruits. The most pious teachers, transferred from Paris to Meaux, from that time acted with more liberty. There was freedom of speech, and great was the stride then taken by the Reformation in France. Lefevre energetically expounded that Gospel with which he would have rejoiced to fill the world. He exclaimed: “Kings, princes, nobles, people, all nations should think and aspire after Christ alone. Every priest should resemble that archangel whom John saw in the Apocalypse, flying through the air, holding the everlasting Gospel in his hand, and carrying it to every people, nation, tongue, and king. Come near ye pontiffs, come ye kings, come ye generous hearts! Nations, awake to the light of the Gospel, and inhale the heavenly life. The Word of God is all-sufficient.”HRSCV3 452.5

Such in truth was the motto of that school: The Word of God is All-Sufficient. In this device the whole Reformation is embodied. “To know Christ and his Word,” said Lefevre, Roussel, and Farel, “is the only living and universal theology… He who knows that, knows everything.”HRSCV3 452.6

The truth was making a deep impression at Meaux. Private meetings took place at first; then conferences; and at last the Gospel was preached in the churches. But a new effort inflicted a still more formidable blow against Rome.HRSCV3 452.7

Lefevre desired to enable the Christians of France to read the Holy Scriptures. On the 30th October 1522, he published a French translation of the four Gospels; on the 6th November, the remaining books of the New Testament; on the 12th October 1524, all these books together, at the house of Collin in Meaux; and in 1525, a French version of the Psalms. Thus was begun in France, almost at the same time as in Germany, that printing and dissemination of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue which, three centuries later, was to be so wonderfully developed throughout the world. In France, as on the other side of the Rhine, the Bible had a decisive influence. Experience had taught many Frenchmen, that when they sought to know Divine things, doubt and obscurity encompassed them on every side. In how many moments and perhaps years in their lives had they been tempted to regard the most certain truths as mere delusions! We need a ray from heaven to enlighten our darkness. Such was the ejaculation of many a soul at the epoch of the Reformation. With longings such as these, numbers received the sacred writings from the hands of Lefevre; they were read in their families and in private; conversations on the Bible became frequent; Christ appeared to those souls so long misled, as the center and the sun of all revelation. No longer did they require demonstrations to prove that Scripture was from God; they knew it, for by it they had been transported from darkness to light.HRSCV3 453.1

Such was the course by which so many distinguished persons in France attained a knowledge of God. But there were yet simpler and more common paths, if such can be, by which many of the lower classes were brought to the truth. The city of Meaux was almost wholly inhabited by artisans and dealers in wool. “There was engendered in many,” says a chronicler of the sixteenth century, “so ardent a desire of knowing the way of salvation, that artisans, fullers, and wool-combers took no other recreation, as they worked with their hands, than to talk with each other of the Word of God, and to comfort themselves with the same. Sundays and holidays especially were devoted to the reading of Scripture, and inquiring into the good pleasure of the Lord.”HRSCV3 453.2

Briconnet rejoiced to see piety take the place of superstition in his diocese. “Lefevre, aided by the renown of his great learning,” says a contemporary historian, “contrived so to cajole and circumvent Messire Guillaume Briconnet with his plausible talk, that he caused him to turn aside grievously, so that it has been impossible up to this day to free the city and diocese of Meaux from that pestilent doctrine, where it has so marvelously increased. The misleading that good bishop was a great injury, as until then he had been so devoted to God and to the Virgin Mary.”HRSCV3 453.3

Yet all were not so grievously turned aside, as the Franciscan says, whom we have just quoted. The city was divided into two parties. On the one side were the monks of St. Francis and the friends of the Romish doctrine; on the other, Briconnet, Lefevre, Farel, and all those who loved the new preaching. A man of the poorer classes, by name Leclerc, was one of the most servile adherents of the monks; but his wife and two sons, Peter and John, had received the Gospel with eagerness, and John, who was a wool-carder, soon distinguished himself among the new Christians. James Pavanne, a learned and youthful Picard, “a man of great sincerity and uprightness,” whom Briconnet had invited to Meaux, showed an ardent zeal for the Reformation. Meaux had become a focus of light. Persons called thither by business heard the Gospel, and carried it back to their homes. It was not in the city alone that men were examining the Scriptures; “many of the villages did the same,” says a chronicle, “so that in this diocese an image of the renovated Church was seen to shine forth.”HRSCV3 453.4

The environs of Meaux were covered with rich crops, and at harvest season a crowd of laborers flocked thither from the surrounding countries. Resting from their toils in the middle of the day, they conversed with the people of the place, who spoke to them of other seed-times and other harvests. Many peasants from Thierache, and particularly from Landouzy, persevered, on their return home, in the doctrines they had heard, and erelong an evangelical church was formed in this district, which is one of the oldest churches in the kingdom. “The renown of this great blessing spread through France,” says the chronicler. Briconnet himself proclaimed the Gospel from the pulpit, and endeavoured to scatter around him “that infinite, sweet, mild, true, and only light (to use his own words) which dazzles and enlightens every creature capable of receiving it, and which, while it enlightens him, raises him by adoption to the dignity of a son of God.” He besought his flock to lend no ear to those who would turn them aside from the Word. “Though an angel from heaven,” said he, “should preach any other Gospel, do not listen to him.” Sometimes gloomy thoughts would prey upon his soul. He was not sure of himself: he shrunk back in alarm, as he dwelt upon the fatal consequences of his unfaithfulness; and forewarning his hearers, he said to them:HRSCV3 453.5

“Even should I, your bishop, change my language and my doctrine, beware of changing like me.” At that moment nothing seemed to indicate the possibility of such a misfortune. “Not only was the Word of God preached,” says the chronicle, “but it was followed; all works of charity and love were practiced there; the morals were reformed and superstitions laid low.”HRSCV3 454.1

Still clinging to the idea of gaining over the king and his mother, the bishop sent to Margaret “the epistles of St. Paul, translated and splendidly illuminated, most humbly entreating her to present them to the king; which cannot but be most pleasing from your hands,” added the good bishop. “They are a royal dish,” continued he, “fattening without corruption, and healing all manner of sickness. The more we taste them, the more we hunger after them with desire unsatiable, and that never cloys.”HRSCV3 454.2

What more welcome message could Margaret receive? The moment seemed favorable. Michael Aranda was at Paris, detained by order of the king’s mother, for whom he was translating portions of the Holy Scripture. But Margaret would have preferred that Briconnet should present this book himself to her brother. “You would do well to come here,” wrote she, “for you know the confidence that Madam and the king place in you.”HRSCV3 454.3

Thus, probably, was the Word of God placed at that time (in 1522 and 1523) under the eyes of Francis I and Louisa of Savoy. They came into contact with that Gospel which they were afterwards to persecute. We do not find that this Word produced any salutary effect upon them. An impulse of curiosity led them to open that Bible which was then making so much noise; but they closed it as soon as they had opened it.HRSCV3 454.4

Margaret herself found it hard to contend against the worldliness by which she was everywhere surrounded. Her tender affection towards her brother, the obedience she owed to her mother, and the flatteries lavished on her by the court, all seemed to conspire against the love she had vowed to Christ. Christ was alone against many. Sometimes Margaret’s soul, assailed by so many adversaries, and stunned by the noise of the world, turned aside from its Master. Then, becoming sensible of her faults, the princess would shut herself up in her apartments, and giving way to her sorrow, utter cries very different from the joyous sounds with which Francis and the young lords, the companions of his debauchery, filled the royal palaces in the midst of their entertainments and festivities:—Left you I have, to follow pleasure’s voice, Left you I have, and for an evil choice, Left you I have, and whither am I come?HRSCV3 454.5

Then turning towards Meaux, Margaret would exclaim in her anguish: “I return to you, to M. Fabry (Lefevre) and all your gentlemen, beseeching you, by your prayers, to obtain of the unspeakable Mercy an alarum for the poor weak and sleepy one, to arouse her from her heavy and deadly slumber.”HRSCV3 454.6

Thus had Meaux become a focus whence the light of the Gospel emanated. The friends of the Reformation indulged in flattering illusions. Who could resist the Gospel if the power of Francis cleared the way? The corrupting influence of the court would then be changed into a holy influence, and France would acquire a moral strength that would render her the benefactress of the world.HRSCV3 454.7

But, on their side, the friends of Rome had taken the alarm. Among those at Meaux was a Jacobin monk named Roma. One day, as Lefevre, Farel, and their friends were talking with him and some other of the papal partisans, Lefevre could not suppress his anticipations. “The Gospel is already gaining the hearts of the great and of the people,” said he, “and in a short time, spreading all over France, it will everywhere throw down the inventions of men.” The aged doctor was animated; his eyes sparkled; his worn-out voice grew sonorous; one might have compared him to the aged Simeon returning thanks to the Lord, because his eyes had seen His salvation. Lefevre’s friends shared in his emotion: their amazed opponents were dumb. On a sudden Roma started up impetuously, and exclaimed in the tone of a popular tribune: “Then I and all the other religioners will preach a crusade; we will raise the people; and if the king permits the preaching of your Gospel, we will expel him from his kingdom by his own subjects.”HRSCV3 454.8

Thus did a monk venture to rise up against the knightly monarch. The Franciscans applauded this language. They must not allow the doctor’s prophecy to be fulfilled. Already the friars were returning daily with diminished offerings. The Franciscans in alarm went about among private families. “These new teachers are heretics,” said they; “they attack the holiest observances, and deny the most sacred mysteries.” Then growing bolder, the most incensed among them issued from their cloister, and proceeded to the bishop’s residence. On being admitted, they said to the prelate: “Crush this heresy, or else the pestilence, which is already desolating the city of Meaux, will spread over the whole kingdom.”HRSCV3 454.9

Briconnet was moved, and for an instant disturbed by this attack, but he did not give way; he felt too much contempt for these ignorant monks and their interested clamors. He went into the pulpit, justified Lefevre, and called the monks pharisees and hypocrites. Still this opposition had already excited trouble and conflict in his soul; he sought to encourage himself by the persuasion that such spiritual combats were necessary. “By this warfare,” said he, in his somewhat mystical language, “we arrive at a vivifying death, and by continually mortifying life, we die living, and live dying.” The way would have been surer if, casting himself upon the Saviour, as the apostles when tossed by the winds and waves, he had exclaimed; “Lord, help me! or I perish.”HRSCV3 454.10

The monks of Meaux, enraged at their unfavorable reception by the bishop, resolved to carry their complaints before a higher tribunal. An appeal lay open to them. If the bishop will not give way, he may be reduced to compliance. Their leaders set out for Paris, and concerted measures with Beda and Duchesne. They hastened before the parliament, and denounced the bishop and the heretical teachers. “The city and all the neighborhood,” said they, “are infected with heresy, and its polluted waters flow from the episcopal palace.”HRSCV3 455.1

Thus did France begin to hear the cry of persecution raised against the Gospel. The sacerdotal and the civil power, the Sorbonne and the parliament, grasped their arms,—arms that were to be stained with blood. Christianity had taught mankind that there are duties and rights anterior to all civil associations; it had emancipated the religious mind, promoted liberty of conscience, and worked a great change in society; for antiquity, which contemplated the citizen everywhere and the man nowhere, had made religion a mere matter of state. But these ideas of liberty had scarcely been given to the world, ere the papacy corrupted them; for the despotism of the prince it had substituted the despotism of the priest; and not unfrequently it had raised both prince and priest against the christian people. A new emancipation was needed; it took place in the sixteenth century. Wherever the Reformation established itself, it broke the yoke of Rome, and the religious mind was again enfranchised. But so rooted in the nature of man is the disposition to tyrannize over truth, that among many protestant nations, the Church, liberated from the arbitrary power of the priest, has again in our days fallen under the yoke of the civil power; destined, like its founder, to be bandied from one despotism to another, to pass from Caiaphas to Pilate, and from Pilate to Caiaphas.HRSCV3 455.2

Briconnet had not the courage necessary for resistance. He would not yield everything, but what he did concede satisfied Rome. “We may well do without Luther’s writings,” he thought, “if we keep the Gospel; we may easily accede to a certain invocation of the Virgin, if we add that it is only by the mediation of Jesus Christ that she possesses any influence.” If beside the truth we place the power of error, the papacy is satisfied. But the sacrifice which Briconnet felt the deepest, and which yet was required of him, was the loss of his friends. If the bishop would escape, he must sacrifice his brethren. Of timid character, but little prepared to give up his riches and his station for Christ’s sake, already alarmed, shaken, and cast down, he was still further led astray by treacherous advisers: if the evangelical doctors should quit Meaux (said some), they will carry the Reformation elsewhere. His heart was torn by a painful struggle. At last the wisdom of this world prevailed; he gave way, and, on the 15th of October 1523, published three mandates, the first of which enjoined prayers for the dead, and the invocation of the Virgin and of the saints; the second forbade any one to buy, borrow, read, possess, or carry about with him Luther’s works, and ordered them to be torn in pieces, to be scattered to the winds, or to be burnt; and the last established in express terms the doctrine of purgatory. Then, on the 13th of November in the same year, Briconnet forbade the parish priests and their curates to permit the “Lutherans” to preach. This was not all. The first president of the Parliament of Paris, and Andrew Verjus, councillor in the same court, and before whom Briconnet had shortly afterwards to appear, arrived at Meaux during Lent 1524, no doubt to satisfy themselves of the bishop’s proceedings. The poor prelate did all he could to please them. Already on the 29th of January he had taken the images of the saints under his especial protection; he now began to visit his churches, to preach, and to struggle hard in the presence of the first president and of councillor Verjus to “weed out the heresies that were there shooting up.” The deputies of the Parliament returned to Paris fully satisfied. This was Briconnet’s first fall.HRSCV3 455.3

Lefevre was the special object of hostility. His commentary on the four Gospels, and particularly the “Epistle to Christian Readers,” prefixed to it, had inflamed the anger of Beda and his allies. They denounced this writing to the faculty. “Does he not dare to recommend all the faithful to read the Scriptures?” said the fiery syndic. “Does he not tell therein that whoever loves not Christ’s Word is not a Christian; and that the Word of God is sufficient to lead to eternal life?”HRSCV3 455.4

But Francis I looked on this accusation as a mere theological squabble. He appointed a commission; and Lefevre, having justified himself before it, came off from this attack with all the honors of war.HRSCV3 455.5

Farel, who had not so many protectors at court, was compelled to leave Meaux. It would appear that he first repaired to Paris; and that, having unsparingly attacked the errors of Rome, he could remain there no longer, and was forced to retire to Dauphiny, whither he was eager to carry the Gospel.HRSCV3 456.1

At the time of the dispersion of the Christians at Meaux, another Frenchman, quitting his native country, crossed the threshold of the Augustine convent at Wittenberg, where Luther resided. This was in January 1523.HRSCV3 456.2

Farel was not the only man in the south of France whom God had prepared for his work. A little further to the south than Gap, on the banks of the Rhone, in that city of Avignon called by Petrarch “the third Babylon,” may still be seen the walls of the “apostolic palace,” which the popes and cardinals had long filled with their luxury and debauchery, and which a Roman legate now inhabited, lonely and dejected in the midst of this deserted city, whose narrow filthy streets were seldom trod but by the feet of monks and priests.HRSCV3 456.3

The little court of the legate was, however, sometimes enlivened by a beautiful, amiable, and laughing boy, who gambolled about its halls. This was Francis Lambert, son of the secretary of the apostolic palace, born in 1487, two years before Farel. The child was at first astonished at the irreligion and crimes of these prelates,—”crimes so numerous and so enormous,” says he, “that I cannot describe them.” He became habituated to them, however, by degrees, and it would appear that he was himself seduced by bad example. Yet God had implanted in his heart a desire for holiness. His father being dead, his mother had the charge of his education, and, according to the custom of the times, intrusted him to the care of the Franciscans. The sanctified air of these monks imposed on Francis, and his timid looks followed them respectfully, as he saw them clad in coarse garments, barefoot, or with rude sandals only, moving to and fro, begging in the city and calling on his mother; and if at any time they chanced to smile upon him, he fancied himself (he tells us) almost in heaven. The monks worked upon this disposition, and Francis, attracted by them, assumed the cowl at the age of fifteen. “It was God’s pleasure,” said he in after-years, “that I might make known to the world the impurity of these whited sepulchers.”HRSCV3 456.4

During the year of his noviciate everything went on smoothly; he was studiously kept in the dark; but no sooner had he pronounced his vows, than the monks showed themselves in all their deformity, and the halo of sanctity that he had discovered around their heads faded away, and he remained incensed, alarmed, and dejected. Francis soon began to feel a secret strength within him, that drove him forcibly towards the Holy Scriptures, and bound him to believe and to teach the Word of God. In 1517, he was nominated apostolical preacher of the convent, and instead of running about like his colleagues after “fat presents and well-stored tables,” he employed himself in travelling afoot through the deserted country, and calling those ignorant people to conversion whom the fire and sincerity of his language drew around him in crowds. But when, after spending several months in passing through the Comtat Venaissin and the surrounding districts, he returned exhausted to his convent on a mule that had been given him to carry his weakened frame, and went to seek a brief repose in his poor cell, some of the monks received him with coldness, others with raillery, and a third party with anger; and they hastened to sell the animal, which they all agreed in saying was the only profit of these evangelical journeys.HRSCV3 456.5

One day, as brother Francis was preaching in a certain town, with a gravity quite apostolic and the vivacity of a native of the south: “Kindle a fire,” exclaimed he, “before this sacred porch, and there consume the spoils of your luxury, your worldly-mindedness, and your debauchery.” Immediately the whole assembly was in commotion; some lighted up a fire; others ran into their houses and returned with dice, playing-cards, and obscene pictures; and then, like the Christians of Ephesus at the preaching of St. Paul, cast all into the flames. A great crowd was gathered round the fire, and among them some Franciscans, who perceiving an indecent drawing of a young female, cunningly drew it away, and hid it under one of their frocks, “to add fuel to their own flames,” says Lambert. This did not escape the eye of brother Francis; a holy indignation kindled within him, and boldly addressing the monks, he inveighed against their lubricity and theft. Abashed at being discovered, they sunk their heads, gave up the picture, but swore to be revenged.HRSCV3 456.6

Lambert, surrounded with debauchery, and become an object of hatred to the monks, felt from time to time an ardent desire to return into the world, which appeared to him infinitely more holy than the cloister: but he found something still better. Luther’s works, carried to the fairs of Lyons, descended the Rhone and reached his cell. They were soon taken from him and burnt; but it was too late. The spirit that animated the Augustine of Wittenberg had passed into the Franciscan of Avignon: he was saved. Vainly until then had he resorted to frequent fasting; vainly had he slept sitting on a stool; vainly had he shunned the looks of woman, worn haircloth next his skin, scourged himself, and so weakened his body that he could scarcely hold himself upright, and sometimes even fainted in the churches and fields as he was preaching to the people. All this, he tells us, could not extinguish the desires and banish the thoughts that preyed upon him, and it was only in faith on the free grace of God and in the sanctity of a married life that he found purity and peace. This is one of those numerous examples which prove that marriage, being of Divine appointment, is a means of grace and holiness, and that the celibacy of priests and monks, the invention of man, is one of the most effectual agents to foster impurity, sully the imagination, disturb the peace of families, and fill society with innumerable disorders.HRSCV3 456.7

At last the friar had made up his mind; he will quit the convent, he will abandon popery, he will leave France. He will go where the streams of the Gospel flow abundant and pure, and he will there plunge into them, and quench the fires that are consuming him. Since all his efforts are unavailing, he will go to Wittenberg, to that great servant of God, whose name alone conjures and affrights the devil, in order that he may find peace. He took advantage of some letters that were to be carried to one of the superiors of the order, and having donned his frock, quitted the Franciscan convent of Avignon in the spring of 1522, after twenty years of struggle. He ascended the Rhone, traversed Lyons, and crossed the forests that cover the lower ridges of the Jura. This tall, thin, ungraceful monk still wore the habit of his order, and rode on an ass, his bare feet almost touching the ground. We have already seen him pass through Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, and Zurich. In the beginning of 1523, he was at Wittenberg, and embraced Luther. But let us return to France and to the Church of Meaux.HRSCV3 457.1