Pierre Caroli lectures on the Psalms

CHAPTER IV.
INCREASING SEVERITY.--LOUIS DE BERQUIN.

Captivity of Francis I.

The year 1525 was critical as well in the religious as in the political

history of France. On the twenty-fourth of February, in consequence of

the disaster at Pavia, Francis fell into the hands of his

rival--Charles, by hereditary descent King of Spain, Naples, and

Jerusalem, sovereign, under various titles, of the Netherlands, and by

election Emperor of Germany--a prince whose vast possessions in both

hemispheres made him at once the wealthiest and most powerful of living

monarchs. With his unfortunate captivity, all the fanciful schemes of

conquest entertained by the French king fell to the ground. But France

felt the blow not less keenly than the monarch. One of the most gallant

armies that ever crossed the Alps had been lost. The kingdom was by no

means invulnerable, for the capital itself might easily reward a

well-executed invasion from the side of Flanders. The recuperative

energies of the country could be put forth to little advantage, so long

as the place of the king--fons omnis jurisdictionis, as the French

legists styled him--was filled by a woman in the capacity of regent.

France bade fair to exhibit to the world the inherent weakness of a

despotism wherein all power, in fact as well as in theory, centres

ultimately in the single person of the supreme ruler as autocrat. For it

was his standing boast that he was "emperor" in his own realm, holding

it of none other than God, and responsible to God alone, and that as

king and emperor he had the exclusive right to make ordinances from

which no subject could appeal without rendering himself liable to the

penalties pronounced upon

traitors.¹ Now that the head was taken away, who could answer for the

harmonious action of the body which had been wont to depend upon
him alone for direction?
Change in the religious policy of Louise de Savoie.

Louise de Savoie, to whom the direction of affairs had been confided

during her son's absence in Italy, had, for greater convenience,

transferred the court temporarily to the city of Lyons, where, under the

protection of Margaret of Angoulême, the most evangelical preachers of

France had been allowed to proclaim the tenets of the reformers within

the churches and in the hearing of thousands of eager listeners. The

queen mother had not yet ventured decidedly to depart from the tolerant

system hitherto pursued by the crown.² But the announcement of the

capture of Francis effected a complete revolution in her policy. There

is no inherent improbability in the story that Chancellor Duprat--the

statesman and ecclesiastic who had gained so strong an ascendancy over

the mind of Louise that he was shortly promoted to the Archbishopric of

Sens and rewarded with the rich abbey of Saint

Bénoit-sur-Loire--insinuated to the queen mother that the misfortunes

befalling France were tokens of the Divine displeasure. Had Francis

spared no exertions to destroy the first germs of the heresy so

insidiously introduced into his kingdom, he would not now, said the

churchman, be languishing in the dungeons of Milan or Madrid. Nor could

hopes be entertained of his deliverance, and of a return of Heaven's

favor, unless the queen mother bestirred herself to retrieve his mistake

by the introduction of new measures to crush heresy. Thus is the chancellor

said to have argued, and to have earned the cardinal's hat at the Pope's hands. However this may be, it is certain that motives of policy were no


¹ Registres du parlement, Feb. 26, 1417/8, Preuves des Libertez, i. 124, etc.

² Yet the trial of Aimé Maigret had been specially

committed by Louise to the Sorbonne, as early as January, 1525 (Letter

of the Council of the Archbishop of Lyons to Beda, Jan. 23, 1525,

Herminjard, i. 326); and Zwingle knew, in March, of a more or less

successful effort to convince the regent that the evangelical doctrines

were subversive of peace--the proof alleged being drawn from Germany,

where "everything was turned upside down." Dedication to Francis I.,

prefixed to De vera et falsa religione commentarius, Herminjard, i. 351.

less influential than the pious considerations which,

perhaps, might have carried full as much conviction had they come from

the lips of a more exemplary prelate.¹ The regent was certainly not

ignorant of the fact that the support of Clement the Seventh, now

specially needed in the delicate diplomacy lying immediately before her,

could best be secured by proving to the pontiff's satisfaction that the

house of Valois was clear of all suspicion of harboring or fostering the

"Lutheran" doctrines and their adherents.

The ordinary appliances for the suppression of heresy--a duty entrusted

by canon law, so far as the preliminary search and the trial of the

suspected was concerned, to the bishops and their courts--had

confessedly proved inadequate. The prelates were in great part

non-residents, and could not from a distance narrowly watch the progress

of the objectionable tenets in their dioceses. One or two of their

number were accused of culpable sluggishness, if not of indifference or

something worse. The question naturally arose, What new and more

effective procedure could be devised?
A commission appointed to try "Lutherans."

After mature deliberation, the privy council resolved upon a plan which

was virtually to remove the cognizance of crimes against religion from

the clergy, and commit it to a mixed commission. The Parliament of Paris

was accordingly notified that the bishop of that city stood ready to

delegate his authority to conduct the trial of all heretics found within

his jurisdiction to such persons as parliament might select for the

discharge of this important function; and the latter body proceeded at

once to designate two of its own members to act in conjunction with two

doctors of the Sorbonne, and receive the faculties promised by the

Bishop of Paris.² A few days later (March 29, 1525), in making a

necessary substitution for one of the members who was unable to

¹ See Mézeray's unfavorable portrait of the unscrupulous

Duprat, Abrégé chron., iv. 584.

² The four were Philippe Pot, President in the chambre des

enquêtes, and André Verjus, a counsellor, from parliament, and

Guillaume Du Chesne and Nicholas Le Clerc, doctors of theology. For the

first on the list, Jacques de la Barde was soon after substituted.

Registres du parlement, March 20, 1524/5, Preuves des Libertez, i. 164.

serve, parliament not only empowered the commission thus constituted to try the

"Lutheran" prisoners, Pauvan and Saulnier, but directed the Archbishops

of Lyons and Rheims, and the bishops or chapters of eight of the

remaining most important dioceses, to confer upon it similar authority

to that already received at the hands of the bishop of the

metropolis.¹
The commission a new form of inquisition.

The inquisition hitherto jealously watched.

It was, however, no ordinary tribunal which the highest civil court of

the kingdom was erecting. The commission was in effect nothing less than

a new phase of the Inquisition, embodying many of the most obnoxious

features of that detested tribunal. It is true that the "Holy Office,"

in a modified form, had existed in France ever since the persecutions

directed against the Albigenses and the bloody campaigns of Simon de

Montfort. But the seat of the solitary Inquisitor of the Faith was

Toulouse, not Paris, and his powers had been jealously circumscribed by

the courts of justice and the diocesan prelates, both equally interested

in rearing barriers to prevent his incursions into their respective

jurisdictions. The Inquisitor of Toulouse was now only a spy and

informer.² Parliament, in particular, had clearly enunciated the

principle that neither inquisitor nor bishop had the right to arrest a

suspected heretic, inasmuch as bodily seizure was the exclusive

prerogative of the officers of the crown. The judges of this supreme

court had summoned to their bar a bishop, and his "official," or vicar,

and had exacted from them an explicit disavowal of any intention to

arrest, in the case of a person whom they had merely detained, as they

asserted, until such time as they could deliver him into the hands of a

competent civil officer.³ And it had become a maxim of French

jurisprudence, that "an inquisitor of the faith has no power of capture

or arrest, save with the assistance, and by authority, of the secular arm."⁴

Parliament breaks down the safeguards of personal liberty.

But the Parliament of Paris, at the instigation of the regent's

¹ Registres du parlement, ubi supra.

² Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 102.

³ Registres du parlement, July 29, 1458, Preuves des Libertez, i. 138.

⁴ "Un inquisiteur de la foi n'a capture ou arrét en ce

royaume, sinon par l'aide et autorité du bras seculier." Pithou, Essaie, art. 37.

advisers, and with the consent of the bishops, was breaking down these

important safeguards of personal liberty. It not only accorded to the

mixed inquisitorial commission, consisting of two lay and two clerical

members, the authority to apprehend persons suspected of heresy, but

removed the proceedings of the commission almost entirely from review

and correction. A pretext for this extraordinary course was found in the

delays heretofore experienced from the interposition of technical

difficulties. "The commissioners," said parliament, "by virtue of the

authority delegated to them, shall secretly institute inquiries against

the Lutherans, and shall proceed against them by personal summons, by

bodily arrest, by seizure of goods, and by other penalties. Their

decisions shall be executed in spite of any and every opposition and

appeal, save in case of the final sentence."¹ While conferring such

extravagant privileges, parliament took pains to prescribe that the

decisions of the commission should be executed precisely as if they had

emanated from the supreme court itself. Such were the lengths to which

the most conservative judges were willing to go, in the hope of speedily

eradicating the reformed doctrines from French soil.

The commission endorsed by Clement VII.

The regent and her master-spirit, the chancellor, did not rest here. The

commission was not irrevocable; and its authority might be disputed. The

work of parliament must receive the papal sanction. For this Clement the

Seventh did not keep them long waiting. He addressed to parliament (May

20, 1525) a brief conceived in a vein of fulsome eulogy, expressing his

marvellous commendation of their acts--acts which he declared to be

worthy of the reputation for wisdom in which the French tribunal was

justly held. And he incited the judges to fresh zeal by the

consideration that the new madness that had fallen upon the world was

prepared to confound and overturn, not religion alone, but all rule,

nobility, pre-eminence and superiority--nay, all law and order. The

reader, it may be feared, will tire of the frequency with which


¹ "Nonobstant oppositions ou appellations quelconques,

semotâ executione a definitiva, si en est appellé." Registres du

parlement, Preuves des Libertez, iii. 164.

the same trite suggestions recur. It is, however, not a little important to

emphasize the argument which the Roman Curia, and its emissaries at the

courts of kings, were never weary of reiterating in the ears of the rich

and powerful. And as they seized with avidity every slight incident of

disorder that could by any means be associated with the great religious

movement now in progress, and presented it as corroboratory proof of the

charge preferred against the "Lutherans," it is not surprising that they

were generally successful in their appeal to the fears of a class which

had so much at stake.

In addition to his endorsement of their pious zeal, Clement's brief

informed the judges of parliament that they would find in the

accompanying bull his formal confirmation of the inquisitorial

commission.¹

This "letter with the leaden seal," dated the seventeenth of May, might

well have opened the eyes of less devoted subjects of the Roman See to

the injury they were inflicting upon the French liberties, heretofore so

cherished an object of judicial solicitude. Addressing itself to the

four commissioners named by parliament, the bull recited the lamentable

progress of the doctrines of that "son of iniquity and heresiarch,

Martin Luther," and praised the ardor displayed to stay their

dissemination in France. It next declared that the Pope, by the advice

and with the unanimous consent of the cardinals, instructed the

commissioners to proceed either singly or collectively against those

persons who had embraced heretical views, "simply and quietly, without

noise or form of judgment." He empowered them to act independently of

the prelates of the kingdom and the Inquisitor of the Faith, or to call

in their assistance, as they should see fit. They might summon

witnesses, under pain of ecclesiastical censures. They might make

investigations against and put on trial all those infected with heresy,

even should the guilty be bishops or archbishops in the church, or be

clothed with the ducal authority in the state. When convicted, such

persons were to be punished by arrest and imprisonment, or cut off,

"like rotten members, from the communion of the church,

¹ "Nos quoque comprobavimus ... sicut per alias nostras

sub plumbo literas poteritis cognoscere." Registres du parlement, ubi

supra.

and consigned to eternal damnation with Satan and his angels." The

commissioners were further authorized to grant permission to any one of
the faithful who chose so to do to invade, occupy, and acquire for himself
the lands, castles, and goods of the heretics, seizing their persons and
leading them away into life-long slavery. From the sentence of the commissioners
all appeal, even to the "Apostolic See" itself, was expressly cut off.¹

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