History of the rise of the huguenots

No other mediæval 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

alone had the power to create doctors in theology, law, and medicine;

but candidates for the degree of master of arts might apply either to

him or to the rival chancellor of Sainte Geneviève: "Quant aux Maistres

és Arts, à l'un ou l'autre Chancelier, selon le choix qui en est fait

par celuy qui veut prendre sa licence." Pasquier, Recherches, 840.

escoliers, que nous appelons Chancelier de l'Université." Pasquier, ubi

supra, 265.

³ Pasquier has a fund of quaint information respecting the

university, the chancellor, the rector, etc. Of the contrast between

rector and chancellor he remarks: "Quant au Chancelier de l'Université

il pare seulement de ce coup contre toutes ces grandeurs (sc. du

Recteur); que le Recteur fait des escoliers pour estudier (tout ainsi

que le capitaine des soldats, quand il les enrolle pour combattre) mais

le Chancelier fait des capitaines quand il baille le bonnet de

Theologie, Decret, Medecine, et Arts, pour enseigner et monter en

chaire." Ubi supra, 843.

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.¹

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


¹ Sleidanus, De statu rel., etc., ad annum 1521.

as of the "new doctrines," the faculty of theology was as ready to attack

vanquished by argument!"¹

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'

Université.² 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.³ 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."⁴ 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;

potius quam ratione convincendam." Determination of the Fac. of Theology

against Luther, April 15. 1521, Gerdes, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. 10,

etc., Documents.

originally built, and the Ville, or Paris north of the Seine. Pasquier,

Recherches, 797; J. Sinceri, Itinerarium Galliæ (1627), 270.

³ Juvenal des Ursins, apud Pasquier, 267.

⁴ Relazioni Venete (Albèri), i. 149.

yet, so great was the honor attaching to the post of teacher within the

The influence of the clergy fell little short of that of the university

in moderating the arbitrary impulses of the monarch.

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.

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


¹ Ibid., i. 226.

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."¹

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,² 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

despotique." Abbé Claude Fleury, Discours sur les Libertés de l'Église

gallicane, 1724 (reprinted in Leber, Coll. de pièces relatives à l'hist.

de France, iii. 252).

est aujourd'hui généralement reconnu." Isambert, Recueil gén. des

anciennes lois françaises, i. 339.

property in France, save by previous consent of the prince and

clergy.¹

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.

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 mediæval 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

Isambert, ubi supra; Ordonnances des Roys de France de la troisième

race, i. 97-98. Section 5 sufficiently expresses the feelings of the

king in reference to the insatiable covetousness of the Roman court:

"Item, exactiones et onera gravissima pecuniarum, per curiam Romanam

ecclesiæ regni nostri impositas vel imposita, quibus regnum nostrum

miserabiliter depauperatum extitit, sive etiam imponendas, aut imponenda

levari, aut colligi nullatenus volumus, nisi duntaxat pro rationabili,

pia et urgentissima causa, inevitabili necessitate, et de spontaneo et

expresso consensu nostro et ipsius ecclesiæ regni nostri." See also

Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vii. 104.

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.
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.

Close upon the "Captivity" followed the "Schism," during which the

generally acknowledged Popes, who had returned to Rome, were opposed by

pretenders at Avignon and elsewhere. A double incentive was now given to

the monarchs of Europe for setting bounds to the ambition of the Papacy.

For while the Popes, through the loss of a great part of their authority

and prestige, had become less formidable antagonists, their financial

extortions had waxed so intolerable as to suggest the strongest

arguments appealing to the self-interest of kings. Hence the frequency

with which the demand

for "a reformation in the head and the members"

resounded from all parts of the Western Church. And hence, too, those

memorable councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which, coming in rapid

succession at the commencement of the fifteenth century, bade fair to

prove the forerunners of a radical reformation. It does not belong here

to discuss the causes of their failure to answer this reasonable

expectation. Yet with one of these assemblages is closely connected a

very important incident in the history of the Gallican Church.

The Council of Basle had not yet concluded its protracted sessions when

Charles the Seventh summoned the clergy of France to meet him in the

city of Bourges. The times were troublous. The kingdom was rent with

intestine division. A war was still raging, during the progress of which

the victorious arms of the English had driven the king from his capital

and deprived him of more than one-half of his dominions. The work of

reinstating the royal authority, though well begun by the wonderful

interposition of the Maid of Orleans, was as yet by no means complete.

Undaunted, however, by the unsettled aspect of his affairs, Charles--the

"King of Bourges," as he was contemptuously styled by his

opponents--made his appearance in the national council convened in his

temporary capital. He was attended by the dauphin, the Dukes of Burgundy

and Brittany, the Count of Maine, and many other noblemen, as well as by

a goodly train of doctors of civil and canon law. Awaiting his arrival

were five archbishops, twenty-five bishops, and a host of abbots and

deputies of universities and chapters of cathedrals. In the presence of

this august convocation, in which all that was most prominent in church

and state was represented, Charles published, on the seventh of July,

1438, an ordinance which has become celebrated under the name of the

"Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges"--by far the more important of the two

documents of similar nature emanating from the French throne.¹

The Pragmatic Sanction, as it is often called by way of pre-eminence, is

the magna charta of the liberties of the Gallican


¹ Sismondi, Hist. des Français, xiii. 317, etc.

Church. Founded upon the results of the discussions of the Council of Basle,

not already too near extinction--may readily be understood when it is

discovered that, with the exception of a few paragraphs relating to

ecclesiastical discipline and worship, the following comprise all the

important provisions:

The Pragmatic Sanction establishes the obligation of the Pope to convene

a general council of the church at least every ten years. The decisions

of the Council of Basle are declared to be of perpetual force. Far from

deriving its authority from the Holy See, the Œcumenical Council, it

is affirmed, depends immediately upon Christ, and the Pope is no less

bound than all other Christians to render due obedience to its

decisions. The right of appeal from the Pope to the future council--a

claim obnoxious in the last degree to the advocates of papal

supremacy--is distinctly asserted. The Pope is declared incapable of

appointing to any high ecclesiastical dignities, save in a few specified

cases; in all others recourse is to be had to election. The pontiff's

pretensions to confer minor benefices are equally rejected. No abuse is

more sharply rebuked and forbidden than that of expectatives--a

species of appointment in high favor with the papal chancery, whereby a

successor to ecclesiastical dignities was nominated during the lifetime

of the incumbent, and in view of his decease.

The Pragmatic Sanction restricts the troublesome and costly appeals to

Rome to cases of great importance, when the parties in interest reside

at a distance of more than four days' journey from that city. At the

same time it prescribes that no one shall be vexed by such appeals after

having enjoyed actual possession of his rank for three years. Going

beyond the limits of the kingdom, it enters into the constitution of the

"Sacred College," and fixes the number of the cardinals at twenty-four,

while placing the minimum age of candidates for the hat

at thirty years. The exaction of the annats is stigmatized as simony. Priests

living in concubinage are to be punished by the forfeiture of one-fourth

of their annual stipend. Finally the principle is sanctioned that no

interdict can be made to include in its operation the innocent with the

guilty.¹

So thorough a vindication of the rights of the Gallican Church had never

before been undertaken. The axe was laid at the root of formidable

abuses; freedom of election was restored; the kingdom was relieved of a

crushing burden of tribute; foreigners were precluded from interfering

with the systematic administration of the laws. The clergy, both regular

and secular, received the greatest benefits, for, while they could no

longer be plundered of so large a part of their incomes, their persons

were protected from arbitrary arrest and hopeless exile beyond the Alps.

The council had not adjourned when the tidings of the transactions at

Bourges reached the city of Basle. The members were overjoyed, and

testified their approval in a grateful letter to the Archbishop of

Lyons. But their exultation was more than equalled by the disgust of

Pope Eugenius the Third. Indeed, the pontificates of this pope and his

immediate successors were filled with fruitless attempts to effect the

repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction. A threat was made to place France

under an interdict; but this was of no avail, being answered by the

counter-threat of the king's representative, who proposed to make a

practical application of the instrument, by appealing from his Holiness

to a future general council. So the Pope, having a vivid recollection of

the perils attending a contest with the French crown, wisely avoided the

hazardous venture.<sup>2


1</sup> The Pragmatic Sanction is long and intricate, consisting

in great part of references to those portions of the canons of the

Council of Basle which it confirms. The entire document may be seen in

the Ordonnances des Roys de Fr. de la troisième race, xiii. 267-291, and

in the Recueil gén. des anc. lois franç., ix. 3-47. Isambert thus

defines the term pragmatic: "On appelle pragmatique toute

constitution donnée en connaissance de cause du consentiment unanime de

tous les grands, et consacrée par la volonté du prince. Le mot pragma

signifie prononcée, sentence, édit; il était en usage avant Saint

Louis."

Leber, iii. 321.