History of the rise of the huguenots

When such superstitious respect was paid to the relics of saints, it is

not surprising that the consecrated wafer or host received the most

extravagant marks of adoration. The king himself was often foremost in

public demonstrations in its honor. Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis

the First, relates in her quaint diary the pompous ceremonial observed

in restoring to its original position a pyx containing the host which

had been stolen from the chapel of the palace of St. Germain-en-Laye.

The culprit had suffered the customary penalty, having had his hand cut

off and being afterward burned alive. In the expiatory procession which

took place a few days


¹ Ibid., 140. ² Ibid., 179, 180.

³ Ibid., 172. ⁴ Ibid., 156.

later, Francis himself walked with uncovered head and

If we may credit his mother's somewhat partial account, the sight of the

monarch's signal piety was so touching as to bring tears to the eyes of

admiring spectators.¹

In view of the general prevalence of debasing forms of superstition

among the people, it is not inappropriate to consider the condition of

that class of the population which is wont to exert the most potent

influence in forming the moral sentiments and moulding the character of

the unlettered masses. We have already touched upon the external

relations of the clergy to the king and to the Pope; let us now look

more narrowly into its internal state.
Wealth and power of the clergy.

At the period of which I am now treating, the clergy, both regular and

secular, had attained unprecedented wealth and power. Never, perhaps,

had France been more fully represented in the "Sacred College."

Assuredly never since the residence of the Popes in Avignon had the

French members possessed such immense riches. Thirteen French cardinals

sat in the papal consistory at one time in the reign of Francis the

First; twelve at the accession of his son to the throne.² Their

influence in the kingdom was almost beyond conception, both on account

of the multitude of benefices they held, and the distinction of the

families from whom they sprang and whose titles they retained. Some were

the incumbents of as many as ten bishoprics and abbeys; while the

cardinals of Bourbon, of Lorraine, of Châtillon, of Du Bellay, and of

Armagnac were of the best blood in the realm, and enjoyed in their own

right, or by reason of their office, very extensive jurisdiction.
Non-residence of the prelates.

A standing reproach against the prelates was their non-residence in the

dioceses committed to their pastoral supervision.


¹ "Et lors faisoit beau voir mon fils porter honneur et

reverence au saint sacrement, que chacun en le regardant se prenoit à

pleurer de pitié et de joye." Journal de Louise de Savoie, Collection de

mémoires (Petitot), xvi. 407.

Mézeray, Abrégé chron. de l'hist. de France (Amst., 1682), iv. 644.

In fact, when the Council of Trent, by one of its first decrees, forbade a
plurality of benefices and enjoined residence, its action was regarded as an
open declaration of war against the French episcopate.¹ But if this abuse

is deplored by Roman Catholic historians as the fruitful cause of the

introduction and rapid progress of Protestantism,² the reformers,

viewing their work as an instrument specially designed by heaven for the

purification of a corrupt church, might well be justified in regarding

the negligence of the bishops as a wise providential arrangement. Many a

feeble germ of truth was spared the violence of persecution until the

kindly sun and the plentiful showers had conferred greater powers of

endurance. Happily for the reformers, the duty of watching for the first appearance
of reputed heresy, which belonged properly to the bishops, was but poorly
discharged by many of the deputies to whom they entrusted it. Nor could a
delegated authority always accomplish what might have been done by a principal.³
Revenues of the clergy.

The annual revenues of the clergy of France were estimated by a Venetian

ambassador, with unsurpassed facilities for obtaining accurate information, at
six million crowns of gold, out of the fifteen millions that constituted the total
revenues of the kingdom. While the clergy thus absorbed two-fifths of the
whole income of France, the king was limited to one million and a half crowns,
or just one-tenth, derived from his particular estates.⁴
Morals of the clergy.

Wealth had engendered luxury and vice. Engrossed in the pursuit of

pleasure or personal aggrandizement, the vast majority of clergymen had

lost all solicitude for the spiritual welfare

342, referring primarily to southern France.

been accustomed to delegate the contentious jurisdiction of his diocese

to an ecclesiastical judge, taking the name of vicar, or more commonly

official ("vicarius generalis officialis"). The court itself became

known as the officialité. Trials for heresy, breach of promise of

marriage, etc., came before it. See the Dictionnaire de la conversation

(1857), s. v. Official.

⁴ Michel Surriano (1561), Rel. des Amb. Vén., Tommaseo, i.

502. The other half went to princes, barons, and other possessors of

lands, etc.

of their flocks. About the middle of the century Claude Haton, curate of

they could but draw the income of their benefices at whatever place of

residence they had selected with a view to the promotion of their

pleasure.¹ They let their benefices out at the highest rate they

could get, little solicitous as to the hands they might fall into,

provided only they were well paid according to the terms of the

agreement. The archbishops, bishops, and cardinals of France were almost

all at the court of the king and the princes. The abbots, priors and

curates resided in the large cities and in other places, wherein they

took more delight than within the limits of their charges and preaching

the true word of God to their subjects and parishioners. From their

indifference the Lutheran heretics took occasion to slander the Church

of Jesus Christ and to seduce Christians from it."²
No regard to the spiritual wants of the people.

Such a condition of utter indifference on the part of the clergy to the

interests of the souls committed to their charge cannot surprise us when

we learn that benefices were conferred without regard to the wants of

the people. The Venetian Soranzo, in an address delivered after the

fruits of the concordat had had full time to mature,³ declared that

in the majority of cases these ecclesiastical positions were dispensed

with little respect to things sacred, and through simple favor. They

served as a convenient method of rewarding good services. Little account

was made of the qualifications

tells us: "Et si le plus souvent à telles noyseay estoient les premiers

les prebstres, l'espée au poing, car ilz estoient des premiers aux

danses, jeux de quilles, d'escrime, et ès tavernes où ilz ribloient et

par les rues toute nuict aultant que les plus meschans du pays." Mém de

Claude Haton, 18.

before the close of the reign of Henry II.

of the candidate, who might have earned his reward in the army or in the civil
service. And so it often happened that he who to-day was a merchant or a soldier,
to-morrow was made bishop or abbot. When, indeed, the fortunate man had a wife
or was reluctant to assume the habit, he could readily get permission to place

the benefice in the name of another, himself retaining the income.¹

"These new pastors," said Correro, "placed in charge of the churches men

who had taken it into their heads to be clergymen only to avoid the

toils of some other occupation--men who, by their avarice and

dissoluteness of life, confused the innocent people and removed their

previous great devotion. This was the door, this was the spacious

gateway, by which heresies entered France. For the ministers sent from

Geneva were easily able to create in the people a hatred of the priests

and friars, by simply weighing in the balance the life led by the

latter."²
The clergy before the concordat.

It was the fashion among those who passed for philosophers to ascribe

the universal dissolution of morals among French ecclesiastics to the

operation of the concordat between Francis the First and Pope Leo the

Tenth, which, said they, by bringing so many bishops and other high

dignitaries to the court in quest of preferment, had corrupted the

characters of the prelates, while exposing their flocks to all the evils

which neglect is wont to breed. Unfortunately, the portraits of the

period preceding the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction that have come

down to us dispel the Arcadian simplicity of manners which seems only to

have existed in the imagination of a few warm admirers of everything

ancient. If the prelates of France were dissolute after the introduction

of the concordat, we are assured by a writer by no means partial to the

"new doctrines," that the state of affairs was no better at

instance of a favorite thus rewarded from the estates of the church. His

amusing vindication of the anomaly is worthy of a perusal. See

Digression contre les Eslections des Benefices, Œuvres, tom. vii. On

one occasion an enemy of the loquacious courtier caused the

assassination of his titular abbot, apparently in the hope of

depriving Brantôme of his chief source of revenue! Ibid., vii. 294.

² "Solo col ponderar loro la vita che tenevano." Relazione

di G. Correro, 1569, Tommaseo, ii. 150.

an earlier period. In their abbeys or bishoprics they were as debauched as
those who followed arms for their profession.1 The bishops bought
their places with money, or with promises which were to be fulfilled after

preferment. "And when they had attained these high dignities," he adds,

"God knows what lives they led. Assuredly they were far more devoted to

their dioceses than they have since been; for they never left them. But

it was to lead a most dissolute life with their dogs and birds, with

their feasts, banquets, marriage entertainments and courtezans, of whom

they gathered seraglios.... All this was permitted, and none dared to

remonstrate or utter censure. Even more could be related, which is

passed over in silence through fear of creating scandal. Our present

bishops, if not better men, are at least more discreet hypocrites, and

more skilfully conceal their black vices."² Nor were the morals of

the monastic orders depicted in brighter colors. "Generally the monks

elected the most jovial companion, him who was the most fond of women,

dogs, and birds, the deepest drinker--in short, the most dissipated; and

this in order that, when they had made him abbot or prior, they might be

permitted to indulge in similar debauch and pleasure. Indeed, they bound

him beforehand by strong oaths, to which he was forced to conform either

voluntarily or by constraint. The worst was that, when they failed to

agree in their elections, they usually came to blows with fist and

sword, and inflicted wounds and even death. In a word, there was more

tumult, more faction and intrigue, than there is at the election of the

Rector of the University of Paris."³ It was not strange, therefore,

that Francis, unable otherwise to recompense his deserving nobles,

should prefer to bestow upon them rich abbeys and priories, rather than

leave these to the monks in their cloisters--monks who, as the monarch

used to

plus gens-de-bien, et mieux vivants; car en leurs Eveschez et Abbayes,

ils estoient autant desbauchez que Gens-d'armes; car comme j'ay dit

cydevant, qu'à la cour s'ils faisoient l'amour, c'estoit discrètement et

sans scandale," etc. Brantôme, ubi supra, vii. 312.

² "Au moins plus sages hypocrites, qui cachent mieux leurs

vices noirs." Brantôme, ubi supra, vii. 287-289.

say, "were good for nothing but to eat and drink, to frequent

taverns and gamble, to twist cords for the cross-bow, set traps for

ferrets and rabbits, and train linnets to whistle"--men whose idleness

and other vices were so notorious that the expressions, "He is as idle

as a priest or monk," and "Avaricious and lewd as a priest or monk,"

passed into proverbs.¹
Aversion to the use of the French language.

Ecclesiastical teachers themselves so ignorant and corrupt could not be

expected to do much for the elevation of the laity. Of popularizing

knowledge, especially religious knowledge, the clergy and their

adherents had little thought. Latin alone was deemed suitable for the

discussion of matters of faith. It was enough to condemn the employment

of French for this purpose, that it could be understood by the people.

For the reformers was reserved the honor of raising the dialect of the

masses to the dignity of a language fit for the highest literary uses,

and of compelling even their antagonists to resort to it in

self-defence, though, it must be confessed, with a very poor grace. So

late as in 1558 we find a leading theologian of the Sorbonne publicly

apologizing for the condescension. "Very dear friend," he writes in

the address to the reader, "I doubt not that, at first sight, you will

regard it as strange and perhaps very wrong that this reply is couched

in the vulgar tongue; seeing that it would be much more suitable were

it circulated in the Latin rather than the French tongue, inasmuch as

the subject-matter consists of things greatly concerning Christian

faith, which require rather to be put in Latin than in French. Of this

also we have the example of the holy ancient doctors, who were always

accustomed to write against heretics in Latin and not in French."²

If such was the avowed repugnance to the use of the language of the

people in the treatment of religious themes, so late as within a year of

the death of Henry the Second, it may readily be conceived how deep the

aversion was a generation earlier, at the first appearance of the

reformation.

surnommé Démochares, docteur en théologie, 1558. Feuillet 2. Apud

Henri Lutteroth, La réformation en France pendant sa première période

(Paris, 1859), 137.

As to acquaintance with the contents of the Holy Scriptures, either in

the original or in translation, there was next to none among the

professed teachers of science and religion. If the statements of the

celebrated scholar and printer, Robert Étienne, or Stephens, seem almost

incredible, they nevertheless come from a witness of unimpeachable

veracity. Referring to the period of his boyhood or early youth--he was

born in 1503--Étienne sketched the biblical attainments of the doctors

of the Sorbonne after this fashion: "In those times, as I can affirm

with truth, when I asked them in what part of the New Testament some

matter was written, they used to answer that they had read it in Saint

Jerome or in the Decretals, but that they did not know what the New

Testament was, not being aware that it was customary to print it after

the Old. What I am going to state will appear almost a prodigy, and yet

there is nothing more true nor better proven: Not long since, a member

of their college used daily to say, 'I am amazed that these young people

keep bringing up the New Testament to us. I was more than fifty years

old before I knew anything about the New Testament!'"¹

The absence of teaching founded upon a rational exposition of the Holy

Scriptures was not less marked than was the abundance of reported

miracles, by means of which the popular faith was stimulated and

sustained. Above all, the doctrine of transubstantiation was fortified

by the circulation of stories of wonders such as that which took place

at Poitiers, in 1516, when the consecrated wine, spilled by a crazy man,

from white instantly became red.² At other times imposture was

resorted to in support of such profitable beliefs as the existence of

purgatorial fires, or to inculcate the advantage accruing from masses

for the souls of the dead. The "ghost of Orleans" has become historic.

The wife of the provost of the city having died, was buried, as she had

le Nouveau Testament. J'avoys plus de cinquante ans que je ne scavoys

que c'estoit du Nouveau Testament." Robert Étienne, apud Baum,

Origines Evangelii in Gallia restaurati (Strasbourg, 1838), 35.

Paris, 38.

requested, without any pomp and without the customary gifts to the

church. Thereupon the Franciscans conceived the scheme of making use of

her example to warn others against following a course so detrimental to

monastic and priestly interests. The mysterious knockings by means of

which the deceased was supposed to give intimation of her miserable doom

and of her desire that her body, as of one that had been tainted with

heresy, should be removed from the holy ground wherein it had been

interred, were listened to with amazement by the awe-stricken people.

But the opportune discovery of a novice, conveniently posted above the

ceiling of the convent chapel, sadly interfered with the success of the

well contrived plot, and eleven monks convicted of complicity in the

fraud were banished the kingdom. They would have been even more severely

punished had not fear been entertained lest the reformers might find too

much occasion for triumph.¹

More excusable were the theatrical effects which were intended, without

actually deceiving, to heighten the religious devotion of worshippers.

Thus, every Pentecost or Whit-Sunday, in the midst of the service an

angel was seen to descend from the lofty ceiling of the Sainte Chapelle

in Paris, attended by two smaller angels, and bearing a silver vase

containing water for the use of the celebrant of the high mass.² For

this somewhat harmless piece of spectacular display a justification

might be sought in the religious impressions which the people were

supposed to derive most easily through the senses; but nothing could be

urged in defence of much that


¹ Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises Réformées au royaume

de France (commonly ascribed to Theodore de Bèze, or Beza) Lille edit.,

i. 11; Gaillard, vi. 460. A MS. narrative of the farce, dictated by

Calvin and taken down by his secretary, Charles de Jonvillers, has been

discovered in the Geneva Library. It is printed in the Bulletin de la

Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., iii. (1854), 33, etc. Calvin, who had

himself been a student in the University of Orleans, and was fully

acquainted with the circumstances, drew up this piquant monograph for J.

Sleidan to use in his famous history of the times, where an account may

accordingly be read.

the master mechanic on several annual recurrences of the scene, Bulletin

de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., xxv. (1876), 236, with M.

Bordier's erratum.

the clergy tolerated or encouraged. Superstitions of heathen origin were suffered
to reign undisturbed. Pagan statues were openly worshipped. An Isis received
homage and was honored with burning candles. An Apollo at Polignac was a centre of religious veneration, and even the unsavory surroundings, when the
spot where it stood was transformed into a stable, could not deter an anxious

crowd of devotees from prostrating themselves before it.[115] What

better could be expected in an age and country in which the people were

imposed upon by reports that prehistoric coins had been discovered

bearing the strange legend: "I believe in Jesus to be born among

animals and of a Virgin"?¹

It was not astonishing that the church itself did little to remove the

barbarism prevailing among the common people, for, in point of fact,

buffoonery, immodesty, and cruelty had intruded into the very ceremonial

of religion. Never were there more disgusting exhibitions of the low

state of the public morals than when the occurrence of pestilence,

drought, or some other signal visitation of the displeasure of heaven

induced a clergy scarcely less rude than the laity to institute

propitiatory processions. On such occasions children of both sexes, or

perhaps grown men and women, with bare feet, and wearing for their only

clothing a sheet that scarcely concealed their forms, passed through the

streets of the towns, or wearily trudged from village to village,

responsively singing the litanies of the Virgin or the saints, and

loudly repeating the refrain, Ora pro nobis.² Often shameful

indecency and a reckless


¹ Farel, Du vray Usage de la Croix, 129, 131.

² "Credo in Jesum inter animalia ex virgine nasciturum."

Chassanée, Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 295. The medals were said to

have been unearthed at Autun, the residence of Chassanée, who informs us

"multum curavi invenire, sed non potui." But, in addition to the coins,

Chassanée gravely tells us there was also a church built by the

Franks at Chartres before the advent of Christ, in honor of the most

blessed Virgin parituræ; "from which it is demonstrated that, if other

Gentiles prophesied in word concerning Christ, the Franks believed on

him in deed, just as also the Greeks, who erected a temple to the

unknown God." Ibid., ubi supra.

"les processions blanches."

disregard of human life were displayed. In one of the villages of Champagne,
during the protracted drought of 1556, the sacred scenes of the Passion were
publicly enacted in the streets. The person of our Lord was represented by a
young man in a state of entire nudity and bound with cords, who at every step
was scourged by his companions, personating the Roman soldiers. The picture
was true to life, and the blows so far from unreal that the prime actor in the

scandalous performance fell a victim to the inhuman treatment and died

within a few days. The fruits of practices so coarse and debasing were

such as may easily be conceived.¹