A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)
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Title: A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)
Author: Thomas M. Lindsay
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION (VOL. 2 OF 2) ***
The International Theological Library
EDITED BY
CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.,
_Professor of Theological Encyclopædia and Symbolics,
Union Theological Seminary, New York_;
AND
THE LATE STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D.,
_Principal, and Professor of Systematic Theology and
New Testament Exegesis,
United Free Church College, Aberdeen_.
A HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.
BY THOMAS M. LINDSAY,
D.D., LL.D.
IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. II.
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY
A HISTORY
OF
THE REFORMATION
BY
THOMAS M. LINDSAY, D.D., LL.D.
PRINCIPAL, THE UNITED FREE CHURCH
COLLEGE, GLASGOW
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME II
_THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND, FRANCE
THE NETHERLANDS, SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND
THE ANABAPTIST AND SOCINIAN MOVEMENTS
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION_
WITH MAP OF THE REFORMATION AND
COUNTER-REFORMATION (1520-1580).
EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1907
PREFACE.
In this volume I have endeavoured to fulfil the promise made in the
former one to describe the Reformed Churches, the Anabaptist and
Socinian movements and the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century.
It has been based on a careful study of contemporary sources of
information, and no important fact has been recorded for which there is
not contemporary evidence. Full use has been made of work done by
predecessors in the same field. The sources and the later books
consulted have been named at the beginning of each chapter; but special
reference is due to the writings of Professor Pollard on the reigns of
Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and to those of MM. Lemonnier and Mariéjol
for the history of Protestantism in France. The sources consulted are,
for the most part, printed in Calendars of State Papers issued by the
various Governments of Europe, or in the correspondence of prominent men
and women of the sixteenth century, edited and published for Historical
and Archæological Societies; but the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic,
relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, is little
more than a brief account of the contents of the documents, and has to
be supplemented by reference to the original documents in the Record
Office.
The field covered in this volume is so extensive that the accounts of
the rise and progress of the Reformation in the various countries
included had to be very much condensed. I have purposely given a larger
space to the beginnings of each movement, believing them to be less
known and more deserving of study. One omission must be noted. Nothing
has been said directly about the Reformed Churches in Bohemia, Hungary,
and the neighbouring lands. It would have been easy to devote a few
pages to the subject: but such a brief description would have been
misleading. The rise, continuance, and decline of these Churches are so
inseparably connected with the peculiar social and political conditions
of the countries, that no adequate or informing account of them could be
given without largely exceeding the limits of space at my disposal.
After the volume had been fully printed, and addition or alteration was
impossible, two important documents bearing on subjects discussed came
into my hands too late for references in the text.
I have found that the Library of the Technical College in Glasgow
contains a copy, probably unique, of the famous Hymn-book of the
_Brethren_ published at Ulm in 1538. It is entitled: _Ein hubsch neu
Gesangbuch darinnen begrieffen die Kirchenordnung und Geseng die zür
Lants Kron und Fulneck in Behem, von der Christlichen Bruderschafft den
Piccarden, die bishero für Unchristen und Ketzer gehalten, gebraucht und
teglich Gutt zum Ehren gesungen werden._ Gedruckt zu Ulm bey Hans
Varnier. An. MDXXXVIII. I know of a copy of much later date in Nürnberg;
but of no perfect copy of this early impression. It is sufficient to say
that the book confirms what I have said of the character of the religion
of the _Brethren_.
Then in December 1906, Señor Henriques published at Lisbon the authentic
records of the trial of George Buchanan and two fellow professors in
the Coimbra College before the Inquisition. These records show that the
prosecution had not been instigated by the Jesuits, as was generally
conjectured, but was due to the malice of a former Principal of the
College. The statement made on p. 556 has therefore to be corrected.
The kindness of the publishers has provided an historical map, which I
trust will be found useful. It gives, I think for the first time, a
representation to the eye of the wide extent of the Anabaptist movement.
The red bars denote districts where contemporary documents attest the
existence of Anabaptist communities. At least four maps, representing
successive periods, would be needed to show with exactness the shifting
boundaries of the various confessions: one map can only give the general
results.
My thanks are again due to my colleague, Dr. Denney, and to another
friend, for the care they have taken in revising the proof sheets, and
for many valuable suggestions.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
_January_, 1907.
CONTENTS
BOOK III.
THE REFORMED CHURCHES.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
§ 1. The limitations of the Peace of Augsburg 1
§ 2. The Reformation outside Germany 5
§ 3. The Reformed type of Doctrine 6
§ 4. The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government 7
§ 5. The influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches 9
§ 6. What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther 13
§ 7. National Characteristics as they affected the Reformation 18
CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND UNDER ZWINGLI.
§ 1. The political condition of Switzerland 21
§ 2. Zwingli's youth and education 24
§ 3. Zwingli at Glarus and at Einsiedeln 27
§ 4. Zwingli in Zurich 29
§ 5. The Public Disputations 33
§ 6. The Reformation outside Zurich 38
In Basel--Oecolampadius and William Farel 38
In Bern--The _Ten Theses_ 40
In Appenzell and other Cantons 46
_The Christian Civic League_ (Protestant). _The Christian
Union_ (Romanist) 48
§ 7. The Sacramental Controversy 52
CHAPTER III.
THE REFORMATION IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.
§ 1. Geneva 61
§ 2. The Reformation in Western Switzerland 66
Farel and his band of evangelists 71
§ 3. Farel in Geneva 74
Bern, Freiburg, and Geneva 77
The Public Disputation and the _Thèses Évangéliques_ 85
§ 4. Calvin: Youth and education 92
_Christianæ Religionis Institutio_ 99
§ 5. Calvin with Farel in Geneva 102
_Articuli de regimine ecclesiæ_--Discipline in the Church 105
The theologians of Eastern Switzerland and excommunication 110
Calvin and Farel banished from Geneva 120
Calvin recalled to Geneva--_Les ordonnances ecclésiastiques
de l'Église de Genève_ 128
What Calvin did for Geneva 131
CHAPTER IV.
THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.
§ 1. Marguerite d'Angoulême and the "group of Meaux" 136
§ 2. Attempts to repress the movement for Reform 144
§ 3. Change in the character of the movement for Reform 151
§ 4. Calvin and his influence in France 153
§ 5. Persecution under Henry II. 161
§ 6. The organisation of the French Protestant Church 164
§ 7. Reaction against persecution 169
§ 8. The higher aristocracy won for the Reformation in France 171
§ 9. France ruled by the Guises 173
§ 10. Catherine de' Medici becomes Regent 178
§ 11. The Conference at Poissy 186
§ 12. The massacre at Vassy 189
§ 13. The beginning of the Wars of Religion 191
§ 14. The massacre of St. Bartholomew 198
§ 15. The Huguenot resistance after the massacre 200
§ 16. The beginnings of the League 205
§ 17. The League becomes disloyal 207
§ 18. The day of Barricades 211
§ 19. The King takes refuge with the Huguenots 214
§ 20. The Declaration of Henry IV. 217
§ 21. Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic 219
§ 22. The Edict of Nantes 221
CHAPTER V.
THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.
§ 1. The political situation 224
§ 2. The beginnings of the Reformation 228
§ 3. The Anabaptists in the Netherlands 234
§ 4. Philip of Spain and the Netherlands 240
§ 5. William of Orange 254
CHAPTER VI.
THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.
Preparation for the Reformation 274
Lollardy in Scotland 276
Lutheran writings in Scotland 279
The Beginnings of the Reformation 282
George Wishart 284
John Knox, early work in Scotland 285
Knox in England, in Switzerland, and at Frankfurt 286
The "Band subscrived by the Lords." "The Congregation" 289
Knox's final return to Scotland 293
Knox and Cecil. The English alliance 294
_The Scots Confession of Faith_ 302
_The First Book of Discipline_, or _the Policie and
Discipline of the Church_. _The Book of Common Order_ 304
Return of Queen Mary to Scotland 309
* * * * *
BOOK IV.
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH OF HENRY VIII.
Influences in England making for the Reformation. Lollardy, Hatred
of the Clergy, Humanism, Luther 315
The marriage of Henry and Catharine of Aragon, and the doubts
entertained of its validity 322
The Revolt of England from Roman jurisdiction 325
The _Ten Articles_ and the _Injunctions_ 333
_The Bishops' Book_, and its teaching 336
_The English Bible_ 337
Projected alliance with the German Protestants 340
The visitation and dissolution of monasteries 343
The _Six Articles_ and the _King's Book_ 347
CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION UNDER EDWARD VI.
The _Injunctions_ and the _Articles of Inquiry_ 351
The condition of the English Clergy 353
_The First Prayer-Book of King Edward VI._ 356
Continental Reformers in England 358
_The Second Prayer-Book of King Edward VI._ 361
Beginnings of the controversy about Vestments 364
CHAPTER III.
THE REACTION UNDER MARY.
The beginnings of Queen Mary's reign 368
The restoration of England to the papal obedience 371
The _Injunctions_ and the Visitation 374
The revival of heresy laws and the persecutions 375
The martyrdom of Cranmer 378
CHAPTER IV.
THE SETTLEMENT UNDER ELIZABETH.
Elizabeth resolves to be a Protestant. The political situation 385
The _Act of Supremacy_ and the _Act of Uniformity_ 390
The Elizabethan Prayer-Book 396
The _Act of Uniformity_ and the Rubric about _Ornaments_ 402
The dealings with recalcitrant clergymen 408
_The Thirty-Nine Articles_ 411
How Discipline was regulated 417
The character of the Elizabethan settlement 418
* * * * *
BOOK V.
ANABAPTISM AND SOCINIANISM.
CHAPTER I.
REVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL ANTI-ECCLESIASTICAL MOVEMENTS.
Mediæval Nonconformists 421
The Anti-Trinitarians 424
CHAPTER II.
ANABAPTISM.
The mediæval roots of Anabaptism 430
Anabaptism organisation 434
Varieties of teaching among the Anabaptists 437
Anabaptists object to a State Church 442
The Anabaptists in Switzerland. Their persecution 445
Anabaptist hymnology 449
The Kingdom of God in Münster 451
Bernhard Rothmann and his work in Münster 452
Dutch Anabaptists in Münster 459
Polygamy in Münster 463
CHAPTER III.
SOCINIANISM.
Lelio and Fausto Sozzini 470
Socinianism took its rise from a criticism of Doctrines 473
Socinianism and the Scoto-Pelagian theology 474
The doctrines of God, the Work of Christ and the Church 477
* * * * *
BOOK VI.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE NECESSITY OF A REFORMATION OF SOME SORT UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED.
Variety of complaints against the mediæval Church 484
Formation of local churches 487
CHAPTER II.
THE SPANISH CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.
§ 1. The religious condition of Spain 488
§ 2. The reformation under Ximenes 490
§ 3. The Spaniards and Luther 493
§ 4. Pope Adrian VI. and the Spanish Reformation 496
CHAPTER III.
ITALIAN LIBERAL ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THEIR CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.
§ 1. The religious condition of Italy 501
§ 2. Italian Roman Catholic Reformers 504
§ 3. Cardinals Contarini and Caraffa 513
§ 4. The Conference at Regensburg 519
CHAPTER IV.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND THE COMPANY OF JESUS.
§ 1. At Manresa 525
§ 2. Ignatius at Paris. The ecclesiastical situation at Paris 533
§ 3. _The Spiritual Exercises_ 538
§ 4. Ignatius in Italy 545
§ 5. _The Society of Jesus_ 549
CHAPTER V.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.
§ 1. The assembling of the Council 564
§ 2. Procedure at the Council 568
§ 3. Restatement of Doctrines 570
The Doctrine of the Rule of Faith 572
Original Sin and Justification 575
§ 4. The second meeting of the Council 581
§ 5. The third meeting of the Council 587
The position of the Pope strengthened 593
CHAPTER VI.
THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.
§ 1. The Inquisition in Spain 597
§ 2. The Inquisition in Italy 600
§ 3. The Index of prohibited books 602
§ 4. The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation 606
BOOK III.
_THE REFORMED CHURCHES._
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. _The Limitations of the Peace of Augsburg._
The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) secured the legal recognition of
the Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, and consequently within
European polity. Henceforward States, which declared through their
responsible rulers that they meant to live after the religion described
in the _Augsburg Confession_, were admitted to the comity of nations,
and the Pope was legally and practically debarred from excommunicating
them, from placing them under _interdict_, and from inviting obedient
neighbouring potentates to conquer and dispossess their sovereigns. The
Bishop of Rome could no longer, according to the recognised custom of
the Holy Roman Empire, launch a Bull against a Lutheran prince and
expect to have its execution enforced as in earlier days. The Popes were
naturally slow to see this, and had to be reminded of the altered state
of matters more than once.[1]
Of course, the exalted Romanist powers, civil and ecclesiastical, never
meant this settlement to be lasting. They intrigued secretly among
themselves, and fought openly, against it. The final determined effort
to overthrow it was that hideous nightmare which goes by the name of the
Thirty Years' War, mainly caused by the determination of the Jesuits
that by the help of God _and_ the devil, for that, as Carlyle has
remarked, was the peculiarity of the plan, all Germany must be brought
back to the obedience of Holy Stepmother Church, and to submission to
the Supreme Headship of the Holy Roman Empire--the Supreme Headship
becoming more and more shadowy as the years passed. The settlement
lasted, however, and remains in general outline until the present.
But the Religious Peace of Augsburg did not end the revolt against Rome
which was simmering in every land in Western Europe. It made no
provision for the multitude of believers in the _Augsburg Confession_,
whose princes, for conscience' sake or for worldly policy, remained
steadfast to Rome, save that they were to be permitted to emigrate to
territories where the rulers were of the same faith as theirs. These
Lutherans were to be found in every part of Germany, and were very
abundant in the Duchy of Austria. The statement of Faber, the Bishop of
Vienna, that the only good Catholics in that city were himself and the
Archduke Ferdinand, was, of course, rhetorical; but it is a proof of the
numbers of the followers of Luther.[2]
It chained irrevocably to the Romanist creed, by the clause called the
_ecclesiastical reservation_, not merely the people, but the rulers in
the numerous ecclesiastical principalities scattered all over Germany.
This provision secured that if an ecclesiastical prince adopted the
Lutheran faith, he was to be deprived of his principality. It is
probable that this provision did more than anything else to secure for
the Romanists the position they now have in Germany. It was partly due
to the alarms excited by the fact that Albert of Brandenburg, Master of
the Teutonic Knights, had secularised his land of East Prussia and had
become a Lutheran, and by the narrow escape of the province of Köln from
following in the same path, under its reforming archbishop, Hermann von
Wied.
The Peace of Augsburg made no provision for any Protestants other than
those who accepted the Augsburg Confession; and thousands in the
Palatinate and all throughout South Germany preferred another type of
Protestant faith. It is probable that, had Luther lived for ten or
fifteen years longer, the great division between the Reformed or
Calvinist and the Evangelical or Lutheran Churches would have been
bridged over; but after his death his successors, intent to maintain, as
they expressed it, the deposit of truth which Luther had left, actually
ostracised Melanchthon for his endeavour to heal the breach. The
consequence was that the Lutheran Church within Germany after 1555 lost
large districts to the Reformed Church.
Under Elector Frederick III., surnamed the Pious, the territorial Church
of the Palatinate separated from the circle of Lutheran Churches, and in
1563 the Heidelberg Catechism was published. This celebrated doctrinal
formula at once became, and has remained, the distinctive creed of the
various branches of the Reformed Church within Germany; and its
influence extended even farther.
Bremen followed the example of the Palatinate in 1568. Its divines
published a doctrinal _Declaration_ in 1572, and a more lengthy
_Consensus Bremenensis_ in 1595. Anhalt, under its ruler John George
(1587-1603), did away with the consistorial system of Church government,
and abandoned the use of Luther's Catechism. Hesse-Cassel joined the
circle of German Reformed Churches in 1605. These examples were followed
in many smaller principalities, most of which, imitating all the
Reformed Churches, published separate and distinctive confessions of
faith, which were nevertheless supposed to contain the sum and substance
of the common Reformed creed.[3]
These German principalities, rulers and inhabitants, placed themselves
deliberately outside the protection of the Religious Peace of Augsburg.
The fundamental principles of their faith were not very different from
the Lutheran, but they were important enough to make them forego the
protection which the treaty afforded. Setting aside minor differences
and sentiments, perhaps more powerful than doctrines, their separation
from neighbouring Protestants was based on their objection to the
doctrine of _Ubiquity_, essential to the Lutheran theory of the
Sacrament of the Supper, and to the consistorial system of
ecclesiastical government. They repudiated the two portions of the
Lutheran system which were derived professedly from the mediæval Church,
and insisted on basing their exposition of doctrine and their scheme of
ecclesiastical government more directly on the Word of God. They had
come in contact with another reformation movement, had recognised its
sturdier principles, and had become so enamoured of them that they felt
compelled to leave the Lutheran Church for the Reformed.
Still confining ourselves to Germany, it is to be noticed that the
Augsburg Confession ostentatiously and over and over again separated
those who accepted it from protesters against the mediæval Church, who
were called Anabaptists. It repudiated views supposed to be held by them
on Baptism, the Holy Scripture, the possibility of a life of sinless
perfection, and the relation of Christian men to the magistracy. In some
of the truces arranged between the Emperor and the evangelical
princes,--truces which anticipated the religious Peace of
Augsburg,--attempts were made to induce Lutherans and Romanists to unite
in suppressing those sectaries. It is needless to say that _they_ were
not included in the settlement in 1555. Yet they had spread all over
Germany, endured with constancy bloody persecutions, and from them have
come the large and influential Baptist Churches in Europe and America.
From beginning to end they were outside the Lutheran Reformation.
§ 2. _The Reformation outside Germany._
When we go beyond Germany and survey the other countries of Western
Europe, it is abundantly evident that the story of the Lutheran movement
from its beginning down to its successful issue in the Religious Peace
of Augsburg is only a small part of the history of the Reformation.
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Bohemia, Hungary, even Italy,
Spain, and Poland, throbbed with the religious revival of the sixteenth
century, and its manifestations in these lands differed in many
respects from that which belonged to Germany. All shared with Germany
the common experiences, intellectual and religious, political and
economic, of that period of transition which is called the Renaissance
in the wider sense of the word--the transition from mediæval to modern
life.[4] They had all come to the parting of the ways. They had all
emerged from Mediævalism, and all saw the wider outlook which was the
heritage of the time. All felt the same longing to shake themselves
clear of the incubus of clericalism which weighed heavily on their
national life, whether religious or political. Each land went forward,
marching by its own path marked out for it by its past history,
intellectual, religious, and civil. The movements in these various
countries towards a freer and more real religious life cannot be
described in the same general terms; but if Italy and Spain be excepted,
their attempts at a national reformation had one thing in common which
definitely separated them from the Lutheran movement.
§ 3. _The Reformed type of Doctrine._
If the type of doctrine professed by the Protestants in those countries
be considered (confessedly a partial, one-sided, and imperfect
standard), it may be said that they all refused to accept some of the
distinctive Lutheran dogmatic conclusions, and that they all departed
more widely from some of the conceptions of the Mediæval Church. Their
national confessions in their final forms borrowed more from Zurich and
Geneva than from Wittenberg, and they all belong to the Reformed as
distinguished from the Lutheran or Evangelical circle of creeds.[5] It
was perhaps natural that differences in the ritual and theory of the
Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of Christian Public Worship, should
be to the general eye the visible cleavage between rival forms of
Christianity. In the earlier stages of the Reformation movement, the
great popular distinction between the Romanists and Protestants was that
the one refused and the other admitted the laity to partake of the Cup
of Communion; and later, within an orthodox Protestantism, the thought
of _ubiquity_ was the dividing line. The Lutherans asserted and the
Reformed denied or ignored the doctrine; and those confessions took the
Reformed view.
§ 4. _The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government._
This similarity of published creed was the one _positive_ bond which
united all those Churches; but it may also be said that all of them,
with the doubtful exception of the Church of England,[6] would have
nothing to do with the consistorial system of the Lutheran Churches, and
that most of them accepted in theory at least Calvin's conception of
ecclesiastical government. They strove to get away from the mediæval
ideas of ecclesiastical rule, and to return to the principles which they
believed to be laid down for them in the New Testament, illustrated by
the conduct of the Church of the early centuries. The Church, according
to Calvin, was a theocratic democracy, and the ultimate source of
authority lay in the membership of the Christian community, inspired by
the Presence of Christ promised to all His people. But in the sixteenth
century this conception was confronted and largely qualified in
practice, by the dread that it might lead to a return to the clerical
tutelage of the mediæval Church from which they had just escaped.
Presbyter might become priest writ large; and the leaders of the
Reformation in many lands could see, as Zwingli did in Zurich and
Cranmer in England, that the civil authorities might well represent the
Christian democracy. Even Calvin in Geneva had to content himself with
ecclesiastical ordinances which left the Church completely under the
control of _les très honnorès seigneurs syndicques et conseil de
Genève_; and the Scottish Church in 1572 had to recognise that the King
was the "Supreme Governor of this realm as well in things temporal as in
the conservation and purgation of religion." The nations and
principalities in Western Europe which had adopted and supported the
Reformation believed that manifold abuses had arisen in the past,
directly and indirectly, through the exemption of the Church and its
possessions from secular control, and they were determined not to permit
the possibility of a return to such a state of things. The scholarship
of the Renaissance had discovered the true text of the old Roman Civil
Code, and one of the features of that time of transition--perhaps its
most important and far-reaching feature, for law enters into every
relation of human life--was the substitution of civil law based on the
Codes of Justinian and Theodosius, for canon law based on the Decretum
of Gratian. These old Roman codes taught the lawyers and statesmen of
the sixteenth century to look upon the Church as a department of the
State; and the thought that the Christian community had an independent
life of its own, and that its guidance and discipline ought to be in the
hands of office-bearers chosen by its membership, was everywhere
confronted, modified, largely overthrown by the imperious claim of the
civilian lawyers. Ecclesiastical leaders within the Reformed Churches
might strive as they liked to draw the line between the possessions of
the Church, which they willingly placed under the control of civil law,
and its discipline in matters of faith and morals, which they declared
to be the inalienable possession of the Church; but, as a rule, the
State refused to perceive the distinction, and insisted in maintaining
full control over the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Hence it came about
that in every land where the secular authorities were favourable to the
Reformation, the Church became more or less subject to the State; and
this resulted in a large variety of ecclesiastical organisations in
communities all belonging to the Reformed Church. While it may be said
with perfect truth that the churchly ideal in the minds of the leaders
in most of the Reformed Churches was to restore the theocratic democracy
of the early centuries, and that this was a strong point of contrast
between them and Luther, who insisted that the _jus episcopale_ belonged
to the civil magistrate, in practice the secular authorities in
Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Palatinate, etc., kept almost as tight
a hold on the Reformed national Churches as did the Lutheran princes and
municipalities. In one land only, France, the ecclesiastical ideal of
Calvin had full liberty to embody itself in a constitution, and that
only because the French Reformed Church struggled into existence under
the civil rule of a Romanist State, and, like the Christian Church of
the early centuries, maintained itself in spite of the opposition of the
secular authorities which persecuted it.
§ 5. _The Influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches._
The portion of the Reformation which lay outside the Peace of Augsburg
had another characteristic which distinguished it from the Lutheran
Reformation included within the treaty--it owed much more to Humanism.
Erasmus and what he represented had a greater share in its birth and
early progress, and his influence appeared amidst the most dissimilar
surroundings. Henry VIII. and Zwingli seem to stand at opposite poles;
yet the English autocrat and the Swiss democrat were alike in this, that
they owed much to Erasmus, and that the reformations which they
respectively led were largely prompted by the impulse of Humanism. One
has only to compare the _Bishops' Book_ and the _King's Book_ of the
Henrican period in England with the many statements Erasmus has made
about the kind of reformation he desired to see, to recognise that they
were meant to serve for a reformation in life and morals which would
leave untouched the fundamental doctrinal system of the mediæval Church
and its organisation in accordance with the principles laid down by the
great Humanist. The Bible, the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds,
with the doctrinal decisions of the first four Oecumenical Councils, were
recognised as the standards of orthodoxy in the _Ten Articles_; and the
Scholastic Theology, so derided by Erasmus, was contemptuously ignored.
The accompanying _Injunctions_ set little store by pilgrimages, relics,
and indulgences, and the other superstitions of the popular religious
life which the great Humanist had treated sarcastically. The two books
alluded to above are full of instructions for leading a wholesome life.
The whole programme of reformation is laid down on lines borrowed from
Erasmus.
Zwingli was under the influence of Humanism from his boyhood. His young
intellect was fed on the masterpieces of classical antiquity--Cicero,
Homer, and Pindar. His favourite teacher was Thomas Wyttenbach, who was
half a Reformer and half a pure follower of Erasmus. No man influenced
him more than the learned Dutchman. It was his guidance and not the
example of Luther which made him study the Scriptures and the
theologians of the early Church, such as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom.
The influence and example of Erasmus can be seen even in his attempts to
create a rational theory of the Holy Supper. His reformation, in its
beginning more especially, was much more an intellectual than a
religious movement. It aimed at a clearer understanding of the Holy
Scriptures, at the purgation of the popular religious life from idolatry
and superstition, and at a clearly reasoned out scheme of intellectual
belief. The deeper religious impulse which drove Luther, step by step,
in his path of revolt from the mediæval Church was lacking in Zwingli.
He owed little to Wittenberg, much to Rotterdam. It was this connection
with Erasmus that created the sympathy between Zwingli and such early
Dutch Reformers as Christopher Hoen, and made the Swiss Reformer a power
in the earlier stages of the Reformation in the Netherlands.
The beginnings of the Reformation movement in France, Italy, and Spain
were even more closely allied to Humanism.
If the preparation for reformation to be found in the work and teaching
of mediæval evangelical nonconformists like the _Picards_ be set aside,
the beginnings of the Reformation in France must be traced to the small
group of Christian Humanists who surrounded Marguerite d'Angoulême and
Briçonnet the Bishop of Meaux. Marguerite herself and Jacques Lefèvre
d'Étaples, the real leader of the group of scholars and preachers, found
solace for soul troubles in the Christian Platonism to which so many of
the Humanists north and south of the Alps had given themselves. The aim
of the little circle of enthusiasts was a reformation of the Church and
of society on the lines laid down by Erasmus. They looked to reform
without "tumult," to a reformation of the Church by the Church and
within the Church, brought about by a study of the Scriptures, and
especially of the Epistles of St. Paul, by individual Christians weaning
themselves from the world while they remained in society, and by slowly
leavening the people with the enlightenment which the New Learning was
sure to bring. They cared little for theology, much for intimacy with
Christ; little for external changes in institutions, much for personal
piety. Their efforts had little visible effect, and their _via media_
between the stubborn defenders of Scholasticism on the one hand and
more thorough Reformers on the other, was found to be an impossible path
to persevere in; but it must not be forgotten that they did much to
prepare France for the Reformation movement which they really
inaugurated; nor that William Farel, the precursor of Calvin himself in
Geneva, belonged to the "group of Meaux."
If Humanism influenced the "group of Meaux," who were the advance guard
of the French Reformation, it manifested itself no less powerfully in
the training of Calvin, who in 1536 unconsciously became the leader of
the movement. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic students
of the band of "royal lecturers" appointed by Francis I. to give France
the benefits of the New Learning. He had intimate personal relations
with Budé and Cop, who were allied to the "group of Meaux," and were
leaders among the Humanists in the University. His earliest book, a
Commentary on the _De Clementia_ of Seneca, shows how wide and minute
was his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classical authors. Like
Erasmus, he does not seem to have been much influenced by the mystical
combination of Platonism and Christianity which entranced the Christian
Humanists of Italy and filled the minds of the "group of Meaux"; and
like him he broke through the narrow circle of elegant trifling within
which most of the Italian scholars were confined, and used the New
Learning for modern purposes. Humanism taught him to think imperially in
the best fashion of ancient Rome, to see that great moral ideas ought to
rule in the government of men. It filled him with a generous indignation
at the evils which flowed from an abuse of absolute and arbitrary power.
The young scholar (he was only three-and-twenty) attacked the
governmental abuses of the times with a boldness which revived the best
traditions of Roman statesmanship. He denounced venal judges who made
"justice a public merchandise." He declared that princes who slew their
people or subjected them to wholesale persecution were not legitimate
rulers, but brigands, and that brigands were the enemies of the whole
human race. At a time when persecution was prevalent everywhere, the
Commentary of the young Humanist pleaded for tolerance in language as
lofty as Milton employed in his _Areopagitica_. He was not blind to the
defects of the stoical morality displayed in the book he commented upon.
He contrasted the stoical indifference with Christian sympathy, and
stoical individualism with the thought of Christian society; but he
seized upon and made his own the loftier moral ideas in Stoicism, and
applied them to public life. Luther was great, none greater, in holding
up the liberty of the Christian man; but there he halted, or advanced
beyond it with very faltering step. Humanism taught Calvin the claims
and the duties of the Christian society; he proclaimed them aloud, and
his thoughts spread throughout that portion of the Reformation which
followed his leadership and accepted his principles. The Holy
Scriptures, St. Augustine, and the imperial ethics of the old Roman
Stoicism coming through Humanism, were a trinity of influence on all the
Reformed Churches.
The Reformation in Spain and Italy was only a brief episode; but in its
short-lived existence in these lands, Humanism was one of the greatest
forces supporting it and giving it strength. In both countries the young
life was quenched in the blood of martyrs. So quickly did it pass, that
it seems surprising to learn that Erasmus confidently expected that
Spain would be the land to accomplish the Reformation without "tumult"
which he so long looked forward to and expected; that the Scriptures
were read throughout the Spanish peninsula, and that women vied with men
in knowledge of their contents, during the earlier part of the sixteenth
century.
§ 6. _What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther._
There was, then, a Reformation movement which in its earliest beginnings
and in its final outcome was quite distinct from that under the
leadership of Luther; but it would be erroneous to say that it was
altogether outside Luther's influence, and that it owed little or
nothing to the great German Reformer. It is vain to speculate on what
might have been, or to ask whether the undoubted movements making for
reformation in lands outside Germany would have come to fruition had not
Luther's trumpet-call sounded over Europe. It is enough to state what
did actually occur. If it cannot be said that the beginnings of the
Reformation in every land came from Luther, it can scarcely be denied
that he gave to his contemporaries the inspiration of courage and of
assured conviction. He delivered men from the fear of priestcraft; he
taught men, in a way that no other did, that redemption was not a secret
science practised by the priests within an institution called the
Church; that all believers had the privilege of direct access to the
very presence of God; and that the very thought of a priesthood who
alone could mediate between God and man was both superfluous and
irreconcilable with the truest instincts of the Christian religion. His
teaching had a sounding board of dramatic environment which compelled
men to listen, to attend, to be impressed, to understand, and to follow.
He had been and was a deeply pious man, with the piety of the type most
esteemed by his contemporaries, and therefore easily understood and
sympathised with by the common man. His piety had driven him into the
convent, as then seemed both natural and necessary. Inside the monastery
he had lived the life of a "young saint"--so his fellow monks believed,
when, in the fashion of the day and of their class, they boasted that
they had among them one destined to revive again the best type of
mediæval saintship. No coarse, vulgar sins of the flesh, common enough
at the time and easily condoned, smirched his young life. When he
attained to peace in believing, he had no doubt of his vocation; no
sudden wrench tore him away from the approved religious life of his
time; no intellectual doubt separated him from the beliefs of his
Church. His very imperviousness to the intellectual liberalising
tendencies of Humanism made him all the more fit to be a trusted
religious leader. He went forward step by step with such a slow, sure
foot-tread that the common man could see and follow. When he did come
forward as a Reformer he did not run amuck at things in general. He felt
compelled to attack the _one_ portion of the popular religious life of
the times which all men who gave the slightest thought to religion felt
to be a gross abuse. The way he dealt with it revealed that he was the
great religious genius of his age--an age which was imperatively if
confusedly calling for reform within the sphere of religion.
If to be original means simply to be the first to see and make known a
single truth or a fresh aspect of a truth, it is possible to contest the
claim of Luther to be an original thinker. It would not be difficult to
point out anticipations of almost every separate truth which he taught
to his generation. To take two only--Wessel had denounced indulgences in
language so similar to Luther's, that, when the Reformer read it long
after the publication of the _Theses_, he could say that people might
well imagine that he had simply borrowed from the old Dutch theologian;
and Lefèvre d'Étaples had taught the doctrine of justification by faith
before it had flashed on Luther's soul with all the force of a
revelation. But if originality be the gift to seize, to combine into one
organic whole, separate isolated truths, to see their bearing upon the
practical religious life of all men, educated and ignorant, to use the
new light to strip the common religious life of all paralysing
excrescences, to simplify it and to make it clear that the sum and
essence of Christianity is "unwavering trust of the heart in Him who has
given Himself to us in Christ Jesus as our Father, personal assurance of
faith because Christ with His work undertakes our cause," and to do all
this with the tenderest sympathy for every true dumb religious instinct
which had made men wander away from the simplicity which is in Christ
Jesus, then Luther stands alone in his day and generation,
unapproachable by any other.
Hence it was that to the common people in every land in Europe up till
about 1540, when Calvin's individuality began to make itself felt,
Luther represented the Reformation; and all who accepted the new
teaching were known as Lutherans, whether in England, the Low Countries,
France, or French speaking Switzerland.[7]
Ecclesiastical historians of the Reformed Church from the sixteenth
century downward have often been inclined to share Luther's supremacy
with Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer was gifted with many qualities which
Luther lacked. He stood in freer relation to the doctrines and practices
of the mediæval Church, and his scheme of theology was perhaps wider and
truer than Luther's. He had a keener intellectual insight, and was
quicker to discern the true doctrinal tendencies of their common
religious verities. But the way in which he regarded indulgences, and
his manner of protesting against them, showed his great inferiority to
Luther as a religious guide.
"Oh the folly of it!" said Zwingli with his master Erasmus,--"the crass,
unmitigated stupidity of it all!" and they scorned it, and laughed at
it, and attacked it with the light keen shafts of raillery and derisive
wit. "Oh the pity of it!" said Luther; and he turned men travelling by
the wrong road on their quest for pardon (a real quest for them) into
the right path. Zwingli never seemed to see that under the purchase of
indulgences, the tramping on pilgrimages from shrine to shrine, the
kissing, reverencing, and adoring of relics, there was a real
inarticulate cry for pardon of sins felt if not vividly repented of.
Luther knew it, and sympathised with it. He was a man of the people, not
merely because he was a peasant's son and had studied at a burgher
University, but because he had shared the religion of the common people.
He had felt with them that the repeated visits of the plague, the new
mysterious diseases, the dread of the Turks, were punishments sent by
God because of the sins of the generation. He had gone through it all;
plunged more deeply in the terror, writhed more hopelessly under the
wrath of God, wandered farther on the wrong path in his quest for
pardon, and at last had seen the "Beatific Vision." The deepest and
truest sympathy with fellow-men and the vision of God are needed to make
a Reformer of the first rank, and Luther had both as no other man had,
during the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
So men listened to him all over Europe wherever there had been a
stirring of the heart for reformation, and it would be hard to say where
there had been none. Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles in the east;
Spaniards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutch, and Scots in the west; Swedes
in the north, and Italians in the south--all welcomed, and read, and
were moved by what Luther wrote. First the _Theses_, then sermons and
tracts, then the trumpet call _To the Nobility of the German Nation_ and
the _Præludium to the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ_,
and, above all, his booklet _On the Liberty of a Christian Man_. As men
read, what had been only a hopeful but troubled dream of the night
became a vision in the light of day. They heard proclaimed aloud in
clear unfaltering speech what they had scarcely dared to whisper to
themselves. Fond and devout imaginations became religious certainties.
They risked all to get possession of the sayings of this "man of God."
Cautious, dour Scotch burghers ventured ship and cargo for the sake of
the little quarto tracts hid in the bales of cloth which came to the
ports of Dundee and Leith. Oxford and Cambridge students passed them
from hand to hand in spite of Wolsey's proclamations and Warham's
precautions. Luther's writings were eagerly studied in Paris by town and
University as early as May 1519.[8] Spanish merchants bought Luther's
books at the Frankfurt Fair, spent some of their hard won profits in
getting them translated and printed in Spanish, and carried them over
the Pyrenees on their pack mules. Under the influence of these writings
the Reformation took shape, was something more than the devout
imagination of a few pious thinkers, and became an endeavour to give
expression to common religious certainties in change of creed,
institutions, and worship. Thus Luther helped the Reformation in every
land. The actual beginnings in England, France, the Netherlands, and
elsewhere had come into existence years before Luther had become known;
it is possible that the movements might have come to fruition apart from
his efforts; but the influence of his writings was like that of the sun
when it quickens and makes the seed sprout that has been "happed" in a
tilled and sown field.
§ 7. _National Characteristics._
It was not that the Reformation in any of these countries was to become
Lutheran in the end, or had a Lutheran stage of development. The number
of genuine Lutherans outside Germany and Scandinavia was very small.
Here and there a stray one was to be found, like Dr. Barnes in England
or Louis Berquin in France. One of the deepest principles of the great
Reformer's teaching itself checked the idea of a purely Lutheran
Reformation which would embrace the whole Reformation Church. He taught
that the practical exercise of faith ought to manifest itself within the
great institutions of human life which have their origin in God--in
marriage, the family, the calling, and the State, in the ordinary life
we lead with its environment. Nations have their character and
characteristics as well as individual men, and they mould in natural
ways the expression in creed and institution of the religious
certainties shared by all. The Reformation in England was based on the
same spiritual facts and forces which were at work in France, Germany,
and the Netherlands, but each land had its own ways of embodying them.
It is interesting to note how national habits, memories, and even
prejudices compelled the external embodiment to take very varying
shapes, and force the historian to describe the Reformation in each
country as something by itself.
The new spiritual life in England took a shape distinctly marked out for
it by the almost forgotten reformatory movement under Wiclif which had
been native to the soil. Scotland might have been expected to follow the
lead of England, and bring her ecclesiastical reconstruction into
harmony with that of her new and powerful ally. The English alliance was
the great political fact of the Scottish Reformation, and leading
statesmen in both countries desired the still nearer approach which
conformity in the organisation of the Churches could not fail to foster.
But the memory of the old French alliance was too strong for Cecil and
Lethington, and Scotland took her methods of Church government from
France (not from Geneva), and drifted farther and farther away from the
model of the English settlement. The fifteenth century War of the Public
Weal repeated itself in the Wars of Religion in France; and in the Edict
of Nantes the Reformed Church was offered and accepted guarantees for
her independence such as a feudal prince might have demanded. The old
political local independence which had characterised the Low Countries
in the later Middle Ages reasserted itself in the ecclesiastical
arrangements of the Netherlands. The civic republics of Switzerland
demanded and received an ecclesiastical form of government which suited
the needs of their social and political life.
Yet amidst all this diversity there was the prevailing sense of an
underlying unity, and the knowledge that each national Church was part
of the Catholic Church Reformed was keener than among the Lutheran
Churches. Protestant England in the time of Edward VI. welcomed and
supported refugees banished by the Augsburg Interim from Strassburg.
Frankfurt received and provided for families who fled from the Marian
persecutions in England. Geneva became a city of refuge for oppressed
Protestants from every land, and these strangers frequently added quite
a third to her population. The feeling of fraternity was maintained, as
in the days of the early Church, by constant interchange of letters and
messengers, and correspondence gave a sense of unity which it was
impossible to embody in external political organisation. The sense of a
common danger was also a wonderful bond of kinship; and the feeling that
Philip of Spain was always plotting their destruction, softened
inter-ecclesiastical jealousies. The same sort of events occurred in all
the Churches at almost the same times. The Colloquy of Westminster
(1559) was separated from the Colloquy of Poissy (1561) by an interval
of two years only, and the same questions were discussed at both. Queen
Elizabeth openly declared herself a Protestant by partaking of the
communion in both "kinds" at Easter, 1559; and on the same day Antoine
de Bourbon, King of Navarre, made the same profession in the same way at
Pau in the south of France. Mary of Guise resolved that the same
festival should see the Scots united under the old faith, and thus
started the overt rebellion which ended in Scotland becoming a
Protestant nation.
The course of the Reformation in each country must be described
separately, and yet it is the one story with differences due to the
accidents of national temperaments, memories, and political
institutions.
CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND UNDER ZWINGLI.
§ 1. _The political Condition of Switzerland._[9]
Switzerland in the sixteenth century was like no other country in
Europe. It was as divided as Germany or Italy, and yet it had a unity
which they could not boast. It was a confederation or little republic of
communes and towns of the primitive Teutonic type, in which the
executive power was vested in the community. The various cantons were
all independent, but they were banded together in a common league, and
they had a federal flag--a white cross on a red ground, which bore the
motto, "Each for all, and all for each."
The separate members of the Federation had come into existence in a
great variety of ways, and all retained the distinctive marks of their
earlier history. The beginnings go back to the thirteenth century, when
the three Forest cantons, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, having freed
themselves from the dominion of their feudal lords, formed themselves
into a _Perpetual League_ (1291), in which they pledged themselves to
help each other to maintain the liberty they had won. After the battle
of Morgarten they renewed the League at Brunnen (1315), promising again
to aid each other against all usurping lords. Hapsburg, the cradle of
the Imperial House of Austria, lies on the south-east bank of the river
Aare, and the dread of this great feudal family strengthened the bonds
of the League; while the victories of the independent peasants over the
House of Austria, and later over the Duke of Burgundy, increased its
reputation. The three cantons grew to be thirteen--Schwyz, Uri,
Unterwalden, Luzern, Zurich, Bern, Glarus, Zug, Freiburg, Basel,
Schaffhausen, Solothurn, and Appenzell. Other districts, without
becoming members of the League, sought its protection, such as the
Valais and the town and country under the Abbey of St. Gallen. Other
leagues were formed on its model among the peasantry of the Rhætian
Alps--in 1396 the _League of the House of God_ (_Lia da Ca' Dè_)--at the
head of which was the Church at Chur; in 1424 the _Graubünden_ (_Lia
Grischa_ or _Gray League_); in 1436 the _League of the Ten
Jurisdictions_ (_Lia della desch Dretturas_). These three united in 1471
to make the _Three Perpetual Leagues of Rhætia_. They were in close
alliance with the Swiss cantons from the fifteenth century, but did not
become actual members of the Swiss Confederacy until 1803. The
Confederacy also made some conquests, and the districts conquered were
generally governed on forms of mutual agreement between several
cantons--a complicated system which led to many bickerings, and
intensified the quarrels which religion gave rise to in the sixteenth
century.
Each of these thirteen cantons preserved its own independence and its
own mode of government. Their political organisation was very varied,
and dependent to a large extent on their past history. The Forest
cantons were communes of peasant proprietors, dwelling in inaccessible
valleys, and their Diet was an assembly of all the male heads of
families. Zurich was a manufacturing and commercial town which had grown
up under the protection of an old ecclesiastical settlement whose
foundation went back to an age beyond that of Charles the Great. Bern
was originally a hamlet, nestling under the fortified keep of an old
feudal family. In Zurich the nobles made one of the "guilds" of the
town, and the constitution was thoroughly democratic. Bern, on the
other hand, was an aristocratic republic. But in all, the power in the
last resort belonged to the people, who were all freemen with full
rights of citizenship.
The Swiss had little experience of episcopal government. Their relations
with the Papacy had been entirely political or commercial, the main
article of commerce being soldiers to form the Pope's bodyguard, and
infantry for his Italian wars, and the business had been transacted
through Legates. Most of the territory of Switzerland was
ecclesiastically divided between the archiepiscopal provinces of Mainz
and Besançon, and the river Aare was the boundary between them. The
division went back to the beginning of Christianity in the land. The
part of Switzerland which lay towards France had been Christianised by
Roman or Gallic missionaries; while the rest, which sloped towards
Germany, had been won to Christianity by Irish preachers! Basel and
Lausanne figure as bishoprics under Besançon; while Constance, a
bishopric under Mainz, asserted episcopal rights over Zurich and the
neighbourhood. The rugged, mountainous part of the country was vaguely
claimed for the province of Mainz without being definitely assigned to
any diocese. This contributed to make the Swiss people singularly
independent in all ecclesiastical matters, and taught them to manage
their Church affairs for themselves.
Even in Zurich, which acknowledged the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Constance, the Council insisted on its right of
supervising Church properties, and convents were under State inspection.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century, intercourse with their
neighbours was changing the old simple manners of the Swiss. Their
repeated victories over Charles the Bold of Burgundy had led to the
belief that the Swiss infantry was the best in Europe, and nations at
war with each other were eager to hire Swiss troops. The custom had
gradually grown up among the Swiss cantons of hiring out soldiers to
those who paid best for them. These mercenaries, demoralised by making
merchandise of their lives in quarrels not their own, and by spending
their pay in riotous living when they returned to their native valleys,
were corrupting the population of the Confederacy. The system was
demoralising in another way. The two great Powers that trafficked in
Swiss infantry were France and the Papacy; and the French king on the
one hand, and the Pope on the other, not merely kept permanent agents in
the various Swiss cantons, but gave pensions to leading citizens to
induce them to persuade the canton to which they belonged to hire
soldiers to the one side or the other. Zwingli, in his earlier days,
believed that the Papacy was the only Power with which the Swiss ought
to ally themselves, and received a papal pension for many years.
§ 2. _Zwingli's Youth and Education._[10]
Huldreich (Ulrich) Zwingli, the Reformer of Switzerland, was born on
January 1st, 1484 (fifty-two days after Luther), in the hamlet of
Wildhaus (or Wildenhaus), lying in the upper part of the Toggenburg
valley, raised so high above sea-level (3600 feet) that fruits refuse to
ripen. It lies so exactly on the central watershed of Europe, that the
rain which falls on the one side of the ridge of the red-tiled church
roof goes into a streamlet which feeds the Danube, and that which falls
on the other finds its way to the Rhine. He came third in a large family
of eight sons and two daughters. His father, also called Huldreich, was
the headman of the commune, and his uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, was the
parish priest. His education was superintended by Bartholomew, who
became Dean of Wesen in 1487, and took the small Huldreich with him to
his new sphere of work. The boy was sent to the school in Wesen, where
he made rapid progress. Bartholomew Zwingli was somewhat of a scholar
himself. When he discovered that his nephew was a precocious boy, he
determined to give him as good an education as was possible, and sent
him to Basel (Klein-Basel, on the east bank of the Rhine) to a famous
school taught, by the gentle scholar, Gregory Buenzli (1494-98).
In four years the lad had outgrown the teacher's powers of instruction,
and young Zwingli was sent to Bern to a school taught by the Humanist
Heinrich Wölfflin (Lupulus), who was half a follower of Erasmus and half
a Reformer. He was passionately fond of music, and lodged in one of the
Dominican convents in the town which was famed for the care bestowed on
musical education. Zwingli was so carried away by his zeal for the
study, that he had some thoughts of becoming a monk merely to gratify
his musical tastes. His family, who had no desire to see him enter a
monastery, removed him from Bern and sent him to the University of
Vienna, where he spent two years (1500-1502). There he had for friends
and fellow-students, Joachim von Watt[11] (Vadianus), Heinrich
Loriti[12] of Glarus (Glareanus), Johann Heigerlin[13] of Leutkirch
(Faber), and Johann Maier of Eck, the most notable of all Luther's
opponents. In 1502 he returned to Switzerland and matriculated in the
University of Basel. He became B.A. in 1504 and M.A. in 1506, and in the
same year became parish priest of Glarus.
The childhood and youth of Zwingli form a striking contrast to Luther's
early years. He enjoyed the rude plenty of a well-to-do Swiss farmhouse,
and led a joyous young life. He has told us how the family gathered in
the _stube_ in the long winter evenings, and how his grandmother kept
the children entranced with her tales from the Bible and her wonderful
stories of the saints. The family were all musical, and they sang
patriotic folk-songs, recording in rude verse the glories of Morgarten,
Sempach, and the victories over the tyrant of Burgundy. "When I was a
child," says Zwingli, "if anyone said a word against our Fatherland, it
put my back up at once." He was trained to be a patriot. "From boyhood I
have shown so great, eager, and sincere a love for our honourable
Confederacy that I trained myself diligently in every act and discipline
to this end." His uncle Bartholomew was an admirer of the New Learning,
and the boy was nurtured in everything that went to make a Humanist,
with all its virtues and failings. He was educated, one might almost
say, in the art of enjoying the present without discriminating much
between what was good and evil in surrounding society. He was trained to
take life as it came. No great sense of sin troubled his youthful
years. He never shuddered at the wrathful face of Jesus, the Judge,
gazing at him from blazoned church window. If he was once tempted for a
moment to become a monk, it was in order to enjoy musical society, not
to quench the sin that was burning him within, and to win the pardon of
an angry God. He took his ecclesiastical calling in a careless,
professional way. He belonged to a family connected on both sides with
the clergy, and he followed the family arrangement. Until far on in life
the question of personal piety did not seem to trouble him much, and he
never belonged, like Luther and Calvin, to the type of men who are the
leaders in a revival of personal religion. He became a Reformer because
he was a Humanist, with a liking for Augustinian theology; and his was
such a frank, honest nature that he could not see cheats and shams done
in the name of religion without denouncing them. To the end of his days
he was led more by his intellect than by the promptings of the heart,
and in his earlier years he was able to combine a deep sense of
responsibility about most things with a careless laxity of moral life.
§ 3. _At Glarus and Einsiedeln._
At Glarus he was able to follow his Humanist studies, guided by the
influences which had surrounded him during his last year at Basel. Among
these his friendship with Thomas Wyttenbach was the most lasting.
Wyttenbach taught him, he tells us, to see the evils and abuses of
indulgences, the supreme authority of the Bible, that the death of
Christ was the sole price of the remission of sins, and that faith is
the key which unlocks to the soul the treasury of remission. All these
thoughts he had grasped intellectually, and made much of them in his
sermons. He prized preaching highly, and resolved to cultivate the gift
by training himself on the models of antiquity. He studied the
Scriptures, joyfully welcomed the new Greek Testament of Erasmus,
published by Froben of Basel in 1516, when he was at Einsiedeln, and
copied out from it the whole of the Pauline Epistles. On the wide
margins of his MS. he wrote annotations from Erasmus, Origen,
Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Jerome. It was his constant companion.
At Glarus he was personally introduced to the system of mercenary war
and of pensions in which Switzerland had engaged. He went to Italy twice
as regimental chaplain with the Glarus contingent, and was present at
the fight at Novara (1513), and on the fatal day at Marignano (1515).
His experiences in these campaigns convinced him of the harm in this
system of hiring out the Swiss to fight in others' quarrels; and when he
became convinced of the evils attending it, he denounced the practice.
His outspoken language displeased many of his most influential
parishioners, especially those who were partisans of the French, and
Zwingli resolved to seek some other sphere of work.
The post of people's priest at Einsiedeln, the famous monastery and
pilgrimage resort, was offered to him and accepted (April 14th, 1516).
He retained his official connection with Glarus, and employed a curate
to do his parish work. His fame as a preacher grew. His friends desired
to see him in a larger sphere, and through their exertions he was
appointed to be people's priest in the Minster at Zurich. An objection
had been made to his selection on the ground that he had disgracefully
wronged the daughter of a citizen of Einsiedeln; and his letter of
vindication, while it exonerates him from the particular charge brought
against him, shows that he was by no means clear of the laxity in
private morals which characterised the Swiss clergy of the time. The
stipend attached to his office in the Great Minster was very small, and
on this ground Zwingli felt himself justified, unwarrantably, in
retaining his papal pension.[14]
§ 4. _Zwingli in Zurich._
Zurich, when Zwingli went to it, was an imperial city. It had grown up
around the Great Minster and the Minster of Our Lady (the Little
Minster), and had developed into a trading and manufacturing centre. Its
citizens, probably owing to the ecclesiastical origin of the town, had
long engaged in quarrels with the clergy, and had generally been
successful. They took advantage of the rivalries between the heads of
the two Minsters and the Emperor's bailiff to assert their independence,
and had passed laws subordinating the ecclesiastical authorities to the
secular rule. The taxes were levied on ecclesiastical as well as on
secular property; all the convents were under civic control, and liable
to State inspection. The popes, anxious to keep on good terms with the
Swiss who furnished soldiers for their wars, had expressly permitted in
Zurich what they would not have allowed elsewhere.
The town was ruled by a Council or Senate composed of the Masters of the
thirteen "gilds" (twelve trades' gilds and one gild representing the
patriciate). The Burgomaster, with large powers, presided. A great
Council of 212 members was called together on special occasions.
The city of Zurich, with its thoroughly democratic constitution, was a
very fitting sphere for a man like Zwingli. He had made a name for
himself by this time. He had become a powerful preacher, able to stir
and move the people by his eloquence; he was in intimate relations with
the more distinguished German Humanists, introduced to them by his
friend Heinrich Loriti of Glarus (known as Glareanus). He had already
become the centre of an admiring circle of young men of liberal views.
His place as people's preacher gave to a man of his popular gifts a
commanding position in the most democratic town in Switzerland, where
civic and European politics were eagerly discussed. He went there in
December 1519.
His work as a Reformer began almost at once. Bernhard Samson or Sanson,
a seller of indulgences for Switzerland, came to Zurich to push his
trade. Zwingli had already encountered him at Einsiedeln, and, prompted
by the Bishop of Constance and his vicar-general, John Faber, both of
whom disliked the indulgences, had preached against him. He now
persuaded the Council of Zurich to forbid Samson's stay in the town.
The papal treatment of the Swiss Reformer was very different from what
had been meted out to Luther. Samson received orders from Rome to give
no trouble to the Zurichers, and to leave the city rather than quarrel
with them. The difference, no doubt, arose from the desire of the
_Curia_ to do nothing to hinder the supply of Swiss soldiers for the
papal wars; but it was also justified by the contrast in the treatment
of the subject by the two Reformers. Luther struck at a great moral
abuse, and his strokes cut deeply into the whole round of mediæval
religious life, with its doctrine of a special priesthood; he made men
see the profanity of any claim made by men to pardon sin, or to
interfere between their fellow-men and God. Zwingli took the whole
matter more lightly. His position was that of Erasmus and the Humanists.
He could laugh at and ridicule the whole proceeding, and thought most of
the way in which men allowed themselves to be gulled and duped by clever
knaves. He never touched the deep practical religious question which
Luther raised, and which made his challenge to the Papacy reverberate
over Western Europe.
From the outset Zwingli became a prominent figure in Zurich. He
announced to the astonished Chapter of the Great Minster, to whom he
owed his appointment, that he meant to give a series of continuous
expositions of the Gospel of St. Matthew; that he would not follow the
scholastic interpretation of passages in the Gospel, but would endeavour
to make Scripture its own interpreter. The populace crowded to hear
sermons of this new kind. In order to reach the country people, Zwingli
preached in the market-place on the Fridays, and his fame spread
throughout the villages. The Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinian
Eremites tried to arouse opposition, but unsuccessfully. In his sermons
he denounced sins suggested in the passages expounded, and found
occasion to deny the doctrines of Purgatory and the Intercession of
Saints.
His strongest attack on the existing ecclesiastical system was made in a
sermon on tithes, which, to the distress of the Provost of the Minster,
he declared to be merely voluntary offerings. (He had been reading Hus'
book _On the Church_.) He must have carried most of the Chapter with him
in his schemes for improvement, for in June 1520 the Breviary used in
the Minster was revised by Zwingli and stripped of some blemishes. In
the following year (March 1521), some of the Zurichers who were known to
be among Zwingli's warmest admirers, the printer Froschauer among them,
asserted their convictions by eating flesh meat publicly in Lent. The
affair made a great sensation, and the Reformers were brought before the
Council of the city. They justified themselves by declaring that they
had only followed the teaching of Zwingli, who had shown them that
nothing was binding on the consciences of Christians which was not
commanded in the Scriptures. Zwingli at once undertook their defence,
and published his sermon, _Selection or Liberty concerning Foods; an
offence and scandal; whether there is any Authority for forbidding Meat
at certain times_ (April 16th, 1522). He declared that in such matters
the responsibility rests with the individual, who may use his freedom
provided he avoids a public scandal.
The matter was felt to be serious, and the Council, after full debate,
passed an ordinance which was meant to be a compromise. It was to the
effect that although the New Testament makes no rule on the subject,
fasting in Lent is a very ancient custom, and must not be set aside
until dealt with by authority, and that the priests of the three
parishes of Zurich were to dissuade the people from all violation of the
ordinance.
The Bishop of Constance thereupon interfered, and sent a Commission,
consisting of his suffragan and two others, to investigate and report.
They met the Small Council, and in a long address insisted that the
Church had authority in such matters, and that the usages it commanded
must be obeyed. Zwingli appeared before the Great Council, and, in spite
of the efforts of the Commission to keep him silent, argued in defence
of liberty of conscience. In the end the Council resolved to abide by
its compromise, but asked the Bishop of Constance to hold a Synod of his
clergy and come to a resolution upon the matter which would be in
accordance with the law of Christ. This resolution of the Council really
set aside the episcopal authority, and was a revolt against the Roman
Church.
Political affairs favoured the rebellion. At the Swiss Diet held at
Luzern (May 1521), the cantons, in spite of the vehement remonstrances
of Zurich, made a treaty with France, and allowed the French king to
recruit a force of 16,000 Swiss mercenaries. Zurich, true to its
protest, refused to allow recruiting within its lands. Its citizens
chafed at the loss of money and the separation from the other cantons,
and Zwingli became very unpopular. He had now made up his mind that the
whole system of pensions and mercenary service was wrong, and had
resigned his own papal pension. Just then the Pope asked Zurich, which
supplied him with half of his bodyguard, for a force of soldiers to be
used in defence of his States, promising that they would not be used to
fight the French, among whose troops were many Swiss mercenaries from
other cantons. The Council refused. Nevertheless, six thousand Zurichers
set out to join the papal army. The Council recalled them, and after
some adventures, in one of which they narrowly escaped fighting with the
Swiss mercenaries in the service of France, they returned home. This
expedition, which brought neither money nor honour to the Zurichers,
turned the tide of popular feeling, and the Council forbade all foreign
service. When the long connection between Zurich and the Papacy is
considered, this decree was virtually a breach between the city and the
Pope. It made the path of the Reformation much easier (Jan. 1522), and
Zwingli's open break with the Papacy was only a matter of time.
It came with the publication of the _Archeteles_ (August 1522), a book
hastily written, like all Zwingli's works, which contained a defence of
all that he had done, and a programme, ecclesiastical and political, for
the future. The book increased the zeal of Zwingli's opponents. His
sermons were often interrupted by monks and others instigated by them.
The burgomaster was compelled to interfere in order to maintain the
peace of the town. He issued an order on his own authority, without any
appeal to the Bishop of Constance, that the pure Word of God was to be
preached. At an assembly of the country clergy of the canton, the same
decision was reached; and town and clergy were ready to move along the
path of reformation. Shortly before this (July 2nd), Zwingli and ten
other priests petitioned the bishop to permit his clergy to contract
legal marriages. The document had no practical effect, save to show the
gradual advance of ideas. It disclosed the condition of things that
sacerdotal celibacy had produced in Switzerland.
§ 5. _The Public Disputations_.
In these circumstances, the Great Council, now definitely on Zwingli's
side, resolved to hold a Public Disputation to settle the controversies
in religion; and Zwingli drafted sixty-seven theses to be discussed.
These articles contain a summary of his doctrinal teaching. They insist
that the Word of God, the only rule of faith, is to be received upon its
own authority and not on that of the Church. They are very full of
Christ, the only Saviour, the true Son of God, who has redeemed us from
eternal death and reconciled us to God. They attack the Primacy of the
Pope, the Mass, the Invocation of the Saints, the thought that men can
acquire merit by their good works, Fasts, Pilgrimages, and Purgatory. Of
sacerdotal celibacy he says, "_I know of no greater nor graver scandal
than that which forbids lawful marriage to priests, and yet permits them
on payment of money to have concubines and harlots. Fie for shame!_"[15]
The theses consist of single short sentences.
The Disputation, the first of the four which marked the stages of the
legal Reformation in Zurich, was held in the Town Hall of the city on
January 29th, 1523. More than six hundred representative men gathered to
hear it. All the clergy of the canton were present; Faber watched the
proceedings on behalf of the Bishop of Constance; many distinguished
divines from other parts of Switzerland were present. Faber seems to
have contented himself with asking that the Disputation should be
delayed until a General Council should meet, and Zwingli replied that
competent scholars who were good Christians were as able as a Council to
decide what was the meaning of the Holy Scriptures. The result of the
Disputation was that the burgomaster declared that Zwingli had justified
his teaching, and that he was no heretic. The canton of Zurich
practically adopted Zwingli's views, and the Reformer was encouraged to
proceed further.
His course of conduct was eminently prudent. He invariably took pains to
educate the people up to further changes by explaining them carefully in
sermons, and by publishing and circulating these discourses. He
considered that it was his duty to teach, but that it belonged to the
civic authorities to make the changes; and he himself made none until
they were authorised. He had very strong views against the use of images
in churches, and had preached vigorously against their presence. Some of
his more ardent hearers began to deface the statues and pictures. The
Great Council accordingly took the whole question into consideration,
and decided that a second Public Disputation should be held, at which
the matter might be publicly discussed. This discussion (October 1523)
lasted for two days. More than eight hundred persons were present, of
whom three hundred and fifty were clergy. On the first day, Zwingli set
forth his views on the presence of images in churches, and wished their
use forbidden. The Council decided that the statues and pictures should
be removed from the churches, but without disturbance; the rioters were
to be pardoned, but their leader was to be banished from the city for
two years. The second day's subject of conference was the Mass. Zwingli
pled that the Mass was not a sacrifice, but a memorial of the death of
our Lord, and urged that the abuses surrounding the simple Christian
rite should be swept away. The presence of Anabaptists at this
conference, and their expressions in debate, warned the magistrates that
they must proceed cautiously, and they contented themselves with
appointing a commission of eight--two from the Council and six
clergymen--to inquire and report. Meanwhile the clergy were to be
informed how to act, and the letter of instruction was to be written by
Zwingli. The authorities also deputed preachers to go to the outlying
parts of the canton and explain the whole matter carefully to the
people.
The letter which Zwingli addressed to the clergy of Zurich canton is a
brief statement of Reformation principles. It is sometimes called the
_Instruction_. Zwingli entitles it, _A brief Christian Introduction
which the Honourable Council of the city of Zurich has sent to the
pastors and preachers living in its cities, lands, and wherever its
authority extends, so that they may henceforth in unison announce and
preach the gospel._[16] It describes sin, the law, God's way of
salvation, and then goes on to speak of images. Zwingli's argument is
that the presence of statues and pictures in churches has led to
idolatry, and that they ought to be removed. The concluding section
discusses the Mass. Here the author states very briefly what he
elaborated afterwards, that the main thought in the Eucharist is not the
repetition of the sacrifice of Christ, but its faithful remembrance, and
that the Romish doctrine and ceremony of the Mass has been so corrupted
to superstitious uses that it ought to be thoroughly reformed.
This letter had a marked effect. The village priests everywhere refused
to say Mass according to the old ritual. But there was a section of the
people, including members of the chapter of the Minster, who shrunk from
changes in this central part of Christian worship. In deference to their
feelings, the Council resolved that the Holy Supper should be meanwhile
dispensed according to both the Reformed and the mediæval rite; in the
one celebration the cup was given to the laity, and in the other it was
withheld. No change was made in the liturgy. Then came a third
conference, and a fourth; and at last the Mass was abolished. On April
13th, 1525, the first Evangelical communion service took place in the
Great Minster, and the mediæval worship was at an end. Other changes had
been made. The monasteries had been secularised, and the monks who did
not wish to leave their calling were all gathered together in the
Franciscan convent. An amicable arrangement was come to about other
ecclesiastical foundations, and the money thus secured was mainly
devoted to education.
From 1522, Zwingli had been living in "clerical" marriage with Anna
Reinhard, the widow of a wealthy Zurich burgher. She was called his wife
by his friends, although no legal marriage ceremony had been performed.
It is perhaps difficult for us to judge the man and the times. The
so-called "clerical" marriages were universal in Switzerland. Man and
woman took each other for husband and wife, and were faithful. There was
no public ceremony. All questions of marriage, divorce, succession, and
so forth, were then adjudicated in the ecclesiastical and not in the
civil courts; and as the Canon Law had insisted that no clergyman could
marry, all such "clerical" marriages were simple concubinage in the eye
of the law, and the children were illegitimate. The offence against the
vow of chastity was condoned by a fine paid to the bishop. As early as
1523, William Röubli, a Zurich priest, went through a public form of
marriage, and his example was followed by others; but it may be
questioned whether these marriages were recognised to be legal until
Zurich passed its own laws about matrimonial cases in 1525.
Luther in his pure-hearted and solemnly sympathetic way had referred to
these clerical marriages in his _Address to the Christian Nobility of
the German Nation_ (1520).
"We see," he says, "how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a
poor priest is encumbered with a woman and children, and burdened
in his conscience, and no man does anything to help him, though he
might very well be helped.... I will not conceal my honest counsel,
nor withhold comfort from that unhappy crowd, who now live in
trouble with wife and children, and remain in shame, with a heavy
conscience, hearing their wife called a priest's harlot and the
children bastards.... I say that these two (who are minded in their
hearts to live together always in conjugal fidelity) are surely
married before God."
He had never succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, and had kept his
body and soul pure; and for that very reason he could sympathise with
and help by his sympathy those who had fallen. Zwingli, on the other
hand, had deliberately contracted this illicit alliance after he had
committed himself to the work of a Reformer. The action remains a
permanent blot on his character, and places him on a different level
from Luther and from Calvin. It has been already noted that Zwingli had
always an intellectual rather than a spiritual appreciation of the need
of reformation,--that he was much more of a Humanist than either Luther
or Calvin,--but what is remarkable is that we have distinct evidence
that the need of personal piety had impressed itself on him during these
years, and that he passed through a religious crisis, slight compared
with that of Luther, but real so far as it went. He fell ill of the
plague (Sept.-Nov. 1519), and the vision of death and recovery drew from
him some hymns of resignation and thanksgiving.[17] The death of his
brother Andrew (Nov. 1520) seems to have been the real turning-point in
his inward spiritual experience, and his letters and writings are
evidence of its reality and permanence. Perhaps the judgment which a
contemporary and friend, Martin Bucer, passed ought to content us:
"When I read your letter to Capito, that you had made public
announcement of your marriage, I was almost beside myself in my
satisfaction. For it was the one thing I desired for you.... I
never believed you were unmarried after the time when you indicated
to the Bishop of Constance in that tract that you desired this
gift. But as I considered the fact that you were thought to be a
fornicator by some, and by others held to have little faith in
Christ, I could not understand why you concealed it so long, and
that the fact was not declared openly, and with candour and
diligence. I could not doubt that you were led into this course by
considerations which could not be put aside by a conscientious man.
However that may be, I triumph in the fact that now you have come
up in all things to the apostolic definition."[18]
The Reformation was spreading beyond Zurich. Evangelical preachers had
arisen in many of the other cantons, and were gaining adherents.
§ 6. _The Reformation outside Zurich_.
Basel, the seat of a famous university and a centre of German Humanism,
contained many scholars who had come under the influence of Thomas
Wyttenbach, Zwingli's teacher. Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, a disciple of
Erasmus, a learned student of the Scriptures, had begun as early as
1512 to show how the ceremonies and many of the usages of the Church had
no authority from the Bible. He worked in Basel from 1512 to 1520.
Johannes Oecolampadius (Hussgen or Heusgen), who had been one of
Luther's supporters in 1521, came to Basel in 1522 as Lecturer on the
Holy Scriptures in the University. His lectures and his sermons to the
townspeople caused such a movement that the bishop forbade their
delivery. The citizens asked for a Public Disputation. Two held in the
month of December 1524--the one conducted by a priest of the name of
Stör against clerical celibacy, and the other led by William
Farel[19]--raised the courage of the Evangelical party. In February
1525 the Council of the town installed Oecolampadius as the preacher in
St. Martin's Church, and authorised him to make such changes as the Word
of God demanded. This was the beginning. Oecolampadius became a firm
friend of Zwingli's, and they worked together.
In Bern also the Reformation made progress. Berthold Haller[20] and
Sebastian Meyer[21] preached the Gospel with courage for several years,
and were upheld by the painter Nicolaus Manuel, who had great influence
with the citizens. The Council decided to permit freedom in preaching,
if in accordance with the Word of God; but they refused to permit
innovations in worship or ceremonies; and they forbade the introduction
of heretical books into the town. The numbers of the Evangelical party
increased rapidly, and in the beginning of 1527 they had a majority in
both the great and the small Councils. It was then decided to have a
Public Disputation.
The occasion was one of the most momentous in the history of the
Reformation in Switzerland. Hitherto Zurich had stood alone; if Bern
joined, the two most powerful cantons in Switzerland would be able to
hold their own. There was need for union. The Forest cantons had been
uttering threats, and Zwingli's life was not secure. Bern was fully
alive to the importance of the proposed discussion, and was resolved to
make it as imposing as possible, and that the disputants on both sides
should receive fair play and feel themselves in perfect freedom and
safety. They sent special invitations to the four bishops whose dioceses
entered their territories--the Bishops of Constance, Basel, Valais, and
Lausanne; and they did their best to assemble a sufficient number of
learned Romanist theologians.[22] They promised not only safe-conducts,
but the escort of a herald to and from the canton.[23] It soon became
evident, however, that the Romanist partisans had no great desire to
come to the _Disputation_. None of the bishops invited appears to have
even thought of being present save the Bishop of Lausanne, and he found
reasons for declining.[24] The _Disputation_ was viewed with anxiety by
the Romanist partisans, and in a letter sent from Speyer (December 28th)
the Emperor Charles V. strongly remonstrated with the magistrates of
Bern.[25] The Bernese were not to be intimidated. They issued their
invitations, and made every arrangement to give éclat to the great
Disputation.[26] Berthold Haller, with the help of Zwingli, had drafted
ten _Theses_, which were to be defended by himself and his colleague,
Francis Kolb; Zwingli had translated them into Latin and Farel into
French for the benefit of strangers; and they were sent out with the
invitations. They were--(1) The Holy Catholic Church, of which Christ is
the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides therein, and does not
hear the voice of a stranger.[27] (2) The Church of Christ makes no law
nor statute apart from the Word of God, and consequently those human
ordinances which are called the commandments of the Church do not bind
our consciences unless they are founded on the Word of God and agreeable
thereto. (3) Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and price
for the sins of the whole world; and all who think they can win
salvation in any other way, or have other satisfaction for their sins,
renounce Christ. (4) It is impossible to prove from Scripture that the
Body and Blood of Christ are corporeally present in the bread of the
Holy Supper. (5) The Mass, in which Christ is offered to God the Father
for the sins of the living and the dead, is contrary to the Holy
Scripture, is a gross affront to the Passion and Death of Christ, and is
therefore an abomination before God. (6) Since Christ alone died for us,
and since He is the only mediator and intercessor between God and
believers, He only ought to be invoked; and all other mediators and
advocates ought to be rejected, since they have no warrant in the Holy
Scripture of the Bible. (7) There is no trace of Purgatory after death
in the Bible; and therefore all services for the dead, such as vigils,
Masses, and the like, are vain things. (8) To make pictures and adore
them is contrary to the Old and New Testament, and they ought to be
destroyed where there is the chance that they may be adored. (9)
Marriage is not forbidden to any estate by the Holy Scripture, but
wantonness and fornication are forbidden to everyone in whatever estate
he may be. (10) The fornicator is truly excommunicated by the Holy
Scripture, and therefore wantonness and fornication are much more
scandalous among the clergy than in the other estate.
These _Theses_ represent in succinct fashion the preaching in the
Reformed Church in Switzerland, and the fourth states in its earliest
form what grew to be the Zwinglian doctrine of the Holy Supper.[28]
The Council of Bern had sent invitations to be present to the leading
preachers in the Evangelical cities of Germany and Switzerland. Bucer
and Capito came from Strassburg, Jacob Augsburger from Mühlhausen,
Ambrose Blaarer from Constance, Sebastian Wagner,[29] surnamed
Hofmeister (Oeconomus), from Schaffhausen, Oecolampadius from Basel, and
many others.[30] Zwingli's arrival was eagerly expected. The Zurichers
were resolved not to trust their leader away from the city without a
strong guard, and sent him to Bern with an escort of three hundred
men-at-arms. A great crowd of citizens and strangers filled the arcades
which line both sides of the main street, and every window in the
many-storied houses had its sightseers to watch the Zurichers tramping
up from gate to cathedral with their pastor safe in the centre of the
troop.
Romanist theologians did not muster in anything like the same strength.
The men of the four Forest cantons stood sullenly aloof; the authorities
in French-speaking Switzerland had no liking for the Disputation, and
the strongly Romanist canton of Freiburg did its best to prevent the
theologians of Neuchâtel, Morat, and Grandson from appearing at Bern;
but in spite of the hindrances placed in their way no less than three
hundred and fifty ecclesiastics gathered to the Disputation. The
conference was opened on January 15th (_le dimenche après la feste de la
circuncision_),[31] and was continued in German till the 24th; on the
25th a second discussion, lasting two days, was begun, for the benefit
of strangers, in Latin. "When _la Dispute des Welches_ (strangers) was
opened, a stranger doctor (of Paris) came forward along with some
priests speaking the same language as himself. He attacked the _Ten
Theses_, and William Farel, preacher at Aigle, answered him."[32] The
more distinguished Romanist theologians who were present seem to have
refrained from taking part in the discussion. The Bishop of Lausanne
defended their silence on the grounds that they objected to discuss such
weighty matters in the vulgar tongue; that no opportunity was given to
them to speak in Latin; and that when the Emperor had interdicted the
Disputation they were told by the authorities of Bern that they might
leave the city if it so pleased them.[33]
The result of the Disputation was that the authorities and citizens of
Bern were confirmed in their resolve to adopt the Reformation. The
Disputation ended on the 26th of January (1528), and on the 7th of
February the Mass was declared to be abolished, and a sermon took its
place; images were removed from the churches; the monasteries were
secularised, and the funds were used partly for education and partly to
make up for the French and papal pensions, which were now definitely
renounced, and declared to be illegal.
The two sermons which Zwingli preached in the cathedral during the
Disputation made a powerful impression on the people of Bern. It was
after one of them that M. de Watteville, the Advoyer or President of the
Republic, declared himself to be convinced of the truth of the
Evangelical faith, and with his whole family accepted the Reformation.
His eldest son, a clergyman whose family interest had procured for him
no less than thirteen benefices, and who, it was commonly supposed,
would be the next Bishop of Lausanne, renounced them all to live the
life of a simple country gentleman.[34]
The republic of Bern for long regarded the _Ten Theses_ as the charter
of its religious faith. Not content with declaring the Reformation
legally established within the city, the authorities of Bern sent
despatches or delegates to all the cities and lands under their control,
informing them of what they had done, and inviting them to follow their
example. They insisted that preachers of the Gospel must be at liberty
to deliver their message without interruption throughout all their
territories. They promised that they would maintain the liberty of both
cults until means had been taken to find out which the majority of the
inhabitants preferred, and that the decision would be taken by vote in
presence of commissioners sent down from Bern.[35] When the majority of
the parishioners accepted the Reformation, the new doctrinal standard
was the _Ten Theses_, and the Council of Bern sent directions for the
method of dispensing the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper,
and for the solemnisation of marriages. The whole of the German-speaking
portion of the canton proper and its dependences seem to have accepted
the Reformation at once. Bern had, besides, some French-speaking
districts under its own exclusive control, and others over which it
ruled along with Freiburg. The progress of the new doctrines was slower
in these district, but it may be said that they had all embraced the
Reformation before the end of 1530. The history of the Reformation in
French-speaking Switzerland belongs, however, to the next chapter, and
the efforts of Bern to evangelise its subjects in these districts will
be described there.
Not content with this, the Council of Bern constituted itself the patron
and protector of persecuted Protestants outside their own lands, and the
evangelisation of western Switzerland owed almost everything to its
fostering care.[36]
Thus Bern in the west and Zurich in the east stood forth side by side
pledged to the Reformation.
The cantonal authorities of Appenzell had declared, as early as 1524,
that Gospel preaching was to have free course within their territories.
Thomas Wyttenbach had been people's priest in Biel from 1507, and had
leavened the town with his Evangelical preaching. In 1524 he
courageously married. The ecclesiastical authorities were strong enough
to get him deposed; but a year or two later the citizens compelled the
cantonal Council to permit the free preaching of the Gospel. Sebastian
Hofmeister preached in Schaffhausen, and induced its people to declare
for the Reformation. St. Gallen was evangelised by the Humanist Joachim
von Watt (Vadianus), and by John Kessler, who had studied at Wittenberg.
In German Switzerland only Luzern and the Forest cantons remained
completely and immovably attached to the Roman Church, and refused to
tolerate any Evangelical preaching within their borders. The Swiss
Confederacy was divided ecclesiastically into two opposite camps.
The strong religious differences could not but affect the political
cohesion of the Swiss Confederacy, linked together as it was by ties
comparatively slight. The wonder is that they did not altogether destroy
it.
As early as 1522, the Bishop of Constance had asked the Swiss Federal
Diet at their meeting at Baden to prohibit the preaching of the
Reformation doctrines within the Federation; and the next year the Diet,
which met again at Baden (Sept. 1523), issued a declaration that all who
practised religious innovations were worthy of punishment. The deputies
from Luzern were especially active in inducing the Diet to pass this
resolution. The attempt to use the Federation for the purpose of
religious persecution, therefore, first came from the Romanist side. Nor
did they content themselves with declarations in the Diet. The Romanist
canton of Unterwalden, being informed that some of the peasants in the
Bernese Oberland had complained that the Reformation had been forced
upon them, crossed the Bernese frontier and committed an act of war.
Bern smarted under the insult.
These endeavours on the part of his opponents led Zwingli to meditate on
plans for leaguing together for the purposes of mutual defence all who
had accepted the Reformation. His plans from the first went beyond the
Swiss Confederacy.
The imperial city of Constance, the seat of the diocese which claimed
ecclesiastical authority over Zurich, had been mightily moved by the
preaching of Ambrose Blaarer, and had come over to the Protestant faith.
The bishop retired to Meersburg and his chapter to Ueberlingen. The
city feared the attack of Austria, and craved protection from the Swiss
Protestants. Its alliance was valuable to them, for, along with Lindau,
it commanded the whole Lake of Constance. Zurich thereupon asked that
Constance be admitted within the Swiss Federation. This was refused by
the Federal Diet (Nov. 1527). Zurich then entered into a _Christian
Civic League_ (_das christliche Bürgerrecht_) with Constance,--a league
based on their common religious beliefs,--promising to defend each other
if attacked. The example once set was soon followed, and the two
following years saw the League increasing rapidly. Bern joined in June
1528, St. Gallen in Nov. 1528, Biel in January, Mühlhausen in February,
Basel in March, and Schaffhausen in October, 1529. Strassburg was
admitted in January 1530. Even Hesse and Würtemburg washed to join. Bern
and Zurich came to an agreement that Evangelical preaching must be
allowed in the Common Lands, and that no one was to be punished for his
religious opinions.
The combination looked so threatening and contained such possibilities
that Ferdinand of Austria proposed a counter-league among the Romanist
cantons; and a _Christian Union_, in which Luzern, Zug, Schwyz, Uri, and
Unterwalden allied themselves with the Duchy of Austria, was founded in
1529, having for its professed objects the preservation of the mediæval
religion, with some reforms carried out under the guidance of the
ecclesiastical authorities. The Confederates pledged themselves to
secure for each other the right to punish heretics. This League had also
its possibilities of extension. It was thought that Bavaria and Salzburg
might join. The canton of the Valais had already leagued itself with
Savoy against Geneva, and brought its ally within the _Christian Union_.
The very formation of the Leagues threatened war, and occasions of
hostilities were not lacking. Austria was eager to attack Constance, and
Bern longed to punish Unterwalden for its unprovoked invasion of Bernese
territory. The condition and protection of the Evangelical population in
the Common Lands and in the Free Bailiwicks demanded settlement, more
especially as the Romanist cantons had promised to support each other in
asserting their right to punish heretics. War seemed to be inevitable.
Schaffhausen, Appenzell, and the Graubünden endeavoured to mediate; but
as neither Zurich nor Bern would listen to any proposals which did not
include the right of free preaching, their efforts were in vain. The
situation, difficult enough, was made worse by the action of the canton
of Schwyz, which, having caught a Zurich pastor named Kaiser on its
territory, had him condemned and burnt as a heretic. This was the signal
for war. It was agreed that the Zurichers should attack the Romanist
cantons, while Bern defended the Common Lands, and, if need be, the
territory of her sister canton. The plan of campaign was drafted by
Zwingli himself, who also laid down the conditions of peace. His
proposals were, that the Forest cantons must allow the free preaching of
the Gospel within their lands; that they were to forswear pensions from
any external Power, and that all who received them should be punished
both corporeally and by fine; that the alliance with Austria should be
given up; and that a war indemnity should be paid to Zurich and to Bern.
While the armies were facing each other the Zurichers received a strong
appeal from Hans Oebli, the Landamann of Glarus, to listen to the
proposals of the enemy. The common soldiers disliked the internecine
strife. They looked upon each other as brothers, and the outposts of
both armies were fraternising. In these circumstances the Zurich army
(for it was the Swiss custom that the armies on the field concluded
treaties) accepted the terms of peace offered by their opponents. The
treaty is known as the First Peace of Kappel (June 1529). It provided
that the alliance between Austria and the Romanist cantons should be
dissolved, and the treaties "pierced and slit" (the parchments were
actually cut in pieces by the dagger in sight of all); that in the
Common Lands no one was to be persecuted for his religious opinions;
that the majority should decide whether the old faith was to be
retained or not, and that bailiffs of moderate opinions should be sent
to rule them; that neither party should attack the other because of
religion; that a war indemnity should be paid by the Romanist cantons to
Zurich and Bern (the amount was fixed at 2500 Sonnenkronen); and that
the abolition of foreign pensions and mercenary service should be
recommended to Luzern and the Forest cantons. The treaty contained the
seeds of future war; for the Zurichers believed that they had secured
the right of free preaching within the Romanist cantons, while these
cantons believed that they had been left to regulate their own internal
economy as they pleased. Zwingli would have preferred a settlement after
war, and the future justified his apprehensions.
Three months after the First Peace of Kappel, Zwingli was summoned to
the Marburg Colloquy, and the Reformation in Switzerland became
inevitably connected with the wider sphere of German ecclesiastical
politics. It may be well, however, to reserve this until later, and
finish the internal history of the Swiss movement.
The First Peace of Kappel was only a truce, and left both parties
irritated with each other. The friction was increased when the
Protestants discovered that the Romanist cantons would not admit free
preaching within their territories. They also shrewdly suspected that,
despite the tearing and burning of the documents, the understanding with
Austria was still maintained. An event occurred which seemed to justify
their suspicions. An Italian condottiere, Giovanni Giacomo de' Medici,
had seized and held (1525-31) the strong position called the Rocco di
Musso on the Lake of Como, and from this stronghold he dominated the
whole lake. This ruffian had murdered Martin Paul and his son, envoys
from the Graubünden to Milan, and had crossed the lake and harried the
fertile valley of the Adda, known as the Val Tellina, which was then
within the territories of the Graubünden (Grisons). The Swiss
Confederacy were bound to defend their neighbours; but when appeal was
made, the Romanist cantons refused, and the hand of Austria was seen
behind the refusal. Besides, at the Federal Diets the Romanist cantons
had refused to listen to any complaints of persecutions for religion
within their lands. At a meeting between Zurich and her allies, it was
resolved that the Romanist cantons should be compelled to abolish the
system of foreign pensions, and permit free preaching within their
territories. Zurich was for open war, but the advice of Bern prevailed.
It was resolved that if the Romanist cantons would not agree to these
proposals, Zurich and her allies should prevent wine, wheat, salt, and
iron from passing through their territories to the Forest cantons. The
result was that the Forest cantons declared war, invaded Zurich while
that canton was unprepared, fought and won the battle of Kappel, at
which Zwingli was slain. He had accompanied the little army of Zurich as
its chaplain. The victory of the Romanists produced a Second Peace of
Kappel which reversed the conditions of the first. War indemnities were
exacted from most of the Protestant cantons. It was settled that each
canton was to be left free to manage its own religious affairs; that the
_Christian Civic League_ was to be dissolved; and a number of particular
provisions were made which practically secured the rights of Romanist
without corresponding advantages to Protestant minorities. The
territories of Zurich were left untouched, but the city was compelled by
the charter of Kappel to grant rights to her rural districts. She bound
herself to consult them in all important matters, and particularly not
to make war or peace without their consent.
As a result of this ruinous defeat, and of the death of Zwingli which
accompanied it, Zurich lost her place as the leading Protestant canton,
and the guidance of the Reformation movement fell more and more into the
hands of Geneva, which was an ally but not a member of the
Confederation. Another and more important permanent result of this
Second Peace of Kappel was that it was seen in Switzerland as in
Germany that while the Reformation could not be destroyed, it could not
win for itself the whole country, and that Roman Catholics and
Protestants must divide the cantons and endeavour to live peaceably side
by side.
The history of the Reformation in Switzerland after the death of Zwingli
is so linked with the wider history of the movement in Germany and in
Geneva, that it can scarcely be spoken about separately. It is also
intimately related to the differences which separated Zwingli from
Luther in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
§ 7. _The Sacramental Controversy._[37]
In the Bern Disputation of 1528, the fourth thesis said "it cannot be
proved from the Scripture that the Body and Blood of Christ are
substantially and corporeally received in the Eucharist,"[38] and the
statement became a distinctive watchword of the early Swiss Reformation.
This thesis, a negative one, was perhaps the earliest official statement
of a bold attempt to get rid of the priestly miracle in the Mass, which
was the strongest theoretical and practical obstacle to the acceptance
of the fundamental Protestant thought of the spiritual priesthood of all
believers. The question had been seriously exercising the attention of
all the leading theologians of the Reformation, and this very trenchant
way of dismissing it had suggested itself simultaneously to theologians
in the Low Countries, in the district of the Upper Rhine, and in many
of the imperial cities. It had been proclaimed in all its naked
simplicity by Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, the theologian of the
German democracy; but it was Zwingli who worked at the subject
carefully, and who had produced a reasonable if somewhat defective
theory based on a rather shallow exegesis, in which the words of our
Lord, "This _is_ My Body," were declared to mean nothing but "This
_signifies_ My Body." Luther, always disposed to think harshly of
anything that came from Carlstadt, inclined to exaggerate his influence
with the German Protestant democracy, believing with his whole heart
that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper the elements Bread and Wine
were more than the bare signs of the Body and Blood of the Lord, was
vehemently moved to find such views concerning a central doctrine of
Christianity spreading through his beloved Germany. He never paused to
ask whether the opinions he saw adopted with eagerness in most of the
imperial cities were really different from those of Carlstadt (for that
is one of the sad facts in this deplorable controversy). He simply
denounced them, and stormed against Zwingli, whose name was spread
abroad as their author and propagator. Nürnberg was almost the only
great city that remained faithful to him. It was the only city also
which was governed by the ancient patriciate, and in which the democracy
had little or no power. When van Hoen and Karl Stadt in the Netherlands,
Hedio at Mainz, Conrad Sam at Ulm, when the preachers of Augsburg,
Strassburg, Frankfurt, Reutlingen, and other cities accepted and taught
Zwingli's doctrine of the Eucharist, Luther and his immediate circle saw
a great deal more than a simple division in doctrine. It was something
more than the meaning of the Holy Supper or the exegesis of a difficult
text which rent Protestantism in two, and made Luther and Zwingli appear
as the leaders of opposing parties in a movement where union was a
supreme necessity after the decision at Speyer in 1529. The theological
question was complicated by social and political ideas, which, if not
acknowledged openly, were at least in the minds of the leaders who took
sides in the dispute. On the one side were men whom Luther held to be in
part responsible for the Peasants' War, who were the acknowledged
leaders of that democracy which he had learnt to distrust if not to
fear, who still wished to link the Reformation to vast political
schemes, all of which tended to weaken the imperial power by means of
French and other alliances, and who only added to their other iniquities
a theological theory which, he honestly believed, would take away from
believers their comforting assurance of union with their Lord in the
Sacrament of the Holy Supper.
The real theological difference after all did not amount to so much as
is generally said. Zwingli's doctrine of the Holy Supper was not the
crude theory of Carlstadt; and Luther might have seen this if he had
only fairly examined it. The opposed views were, in fact, complementary,
and the pronounced ideas of each were implicitly, though not expressly,
held by the other. Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two
different points of view, and in debate they neither understood nor were
exactly facing each other.
The whole Christian Church, during all the centuries, has found three
great ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, and all three
have express reference to the death of the Saviour on the Cross for His
people. The thoughts are Proclamation, Commemoration, and Participation
or Communion. In the Supper, believers proclaim the death and what it
means; they commemorate the Sacrifice; and they partake in or have
communion with the crucified Christ, who is also the Risen Saviour. The
mediæval Church had insisted that this sacramental union with Christ was
in the hands of the priesthood to give or to withhold. Duly ordained
priests, and they alone, could bring the worshippers into such a
relation with Christ as would make the Sacramental participation a
possible thing: and out of this claim had grown the mediæval theory of
Transubstantiation. It had also divided the Sacrament of the Supper into
two distinct rites (the phrase is not too strong)--the Mass and the
Eucharist--the one connecting itself instinctively with the
commemoration and the other with the participation.
Protestants united in denying the special priestly miracle needed to
bring Christ and His people together in the Sacrament; but it is easy to
see that they might approach the subject by the two separate paths of
Mass or Eucharist. Zwingli took the one road and Luther happened on the
other.
Zwingli believed that the mediæval Church had displaced the scriptural
thought of _commemoration_, and put the non-scriptural idea of
_repetition_ in its place. For the mediæval priest claimed that in
virtue of the miraculous power given in ordination, he could really
change the bread and wine into the actual physical Body of Jesus, and,
when this was done, that he could reproduce over again the agony of the
Cross by crushing it with his teeth. This idea seemed to Zwingli to be
utterly profane; it dishonoured the One great Sacrifice; it was
unscriptural; it depended on a priestly gift of working a miracle which
did not exist. Then he believed that the sixth chapter of St. John's
Gospel forbade all thought that spiritual benefits could come from a
mere partaking with the mouth. It was the atonement worked out by
Christ's death that was appropriated and commemorated in the Holy
Supper; and the atonement is always received by faith. Thus the two
principal thoughts in the theory of Zwingli are, that the mediæval
doctrine must be purified by changing the idea of repetition of the
death of Christ for commemoration of that death, and the thought of
manducating with the teeth for that of faith which is the faculty by
which spiritual benefits are received. But Zwingli believed that a
living faith always brought with it the presence of Christ, for there
can be no true faith without actual spiritual contact with the Saviour.
Therefore Zwingli held that there was a Real Presence of Christ in the
Holy Supper; but a spiritual presence brought by the faith of the
believing communicant and not by the elements of Bread and Wine, which
were only the signs _representing_ a Body which was corporeally absent.
The defect of this theory is that it does not make the Presence of
Christ in the Sacrament in any way depend on the ordinance; there is no
sacramental presence other than what there is in any act of faith. It
was not until Zwingli had elaborated his theory that he sought for and
found an explanation of the words of our Lord, and taught that _This is
My Body_, must mean _This signifies My Body_. His theory was entirely
different from that of Carlstadt, with which Luther always identified
it.
Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled
him in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he
believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He
protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they
were the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first
preached on the subject (1519) it was to demand the "cup" for the laity,
and he makes use of an expression in his sermon which reveals how his
thoughts were tending. He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper
"the communicant is so united to Christ _and His saints_, that Christ's
life and sufferings _and the lives and sufferings of the saints_ become
his." No one held more strongly than Luther that the Atonement was made
by our Lord, and by Him alone. Therefore he cannot be thinking of the
Atonement when he speaks of union with the lives and the sufferings of
the saints. He believes that the main thing in the Sacrament is that it
gives such a companionship with Jesus as His disciples and saints have
had. There was, of course, a reference to the death of Christ and to the
Atonement, for apart from that death no companionship is possible; but
the reference is indirect, and through the thought of the fellowship. In
the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples might have touched Him
when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints touch Him now. This
reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in the Sacrament of
the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord, and that the
primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant into contact
with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther thought a
presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the
Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with
it. But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of
the death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the
reference to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther
attains indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which
Zwingli reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the
need of a priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into
immediate connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a
scholastic theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be
present in Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in
such a way that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body,
or it may be present occupying the same space with another body. The
Glorified Body of Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so
when our Lord after His Resurrection appeared suddenly among His
disciples in a room when the doors were shut; for then at some moment of
time it must have occupied the same space as a portion of the walls or
of the door. Christ's glorified Body can therefore be naturally in the
_elements_ without any special miracle, for it is _ubiquitous_. It is in
the table at which I write, said Luther; in the stone which I hurl
through the air. It is in the _elements_ in the Holy Supper in a
perfectly natural way, and needs no priestly miracle to bring it there.
This natural presence of the Body of Christ in the elements in the
Supper is changed into a Sacramental Presence by the promise of God,
which is attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the Holy
Supper.
These were the two theories which ostensibly divided the Protestants in
1529 into two parties, the one of which was led by Zwingli and the other
by Luther. They were not so antagonistic that they could not be
reconciled. Each theologian held implicitly what the other declared
explicitly. Zwingli placed the relation to the Death of Christ in the
foreground, but implicitly admitted the relation to the Risen
Christ--going back to the view held in the Early Church. Luther put
fellowship with the Risen Christ in the foreground, but admitted the
reference to the Crucified Christ--accepting the mediæval way of looking
at the matter. The one had recourse to a very shallow exegesis to help
him, and the other to a scholastic theory of space; and naturally, but
unfortunately, when controversy arose, the disputant attacked the
weakest part of his opponent's theory--Luther, Zwingli's exegesis; and
Zwingli, Luther's scholastic theory of spatial presence.
The attempt to bring about an understanding between Luther and Zwingli,
made by Philip of Hesse, the confidant of Zwingli, and in sympathy with
the Swiss Reformer's schemes of political combination, has already been
mentioned, and its failure related.[39] It need not be discussed again.
But for the history of the Reformation in Switzerland it is necessary to
say something about the further progress of this Sacramental
controversy. Calvin gradually won over the Swiss Protestants to his
views; and his theory, which at one time seemed about to unite the
divided Protestants, must be alluded to.
Calvin began his study of the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy
Supper independently of both Luther and Zwingli. His position as the
theologian of Switzerland, and his friendship with his colleague William
Farel, who was a Zwinglian, made him adapt his theory to Zwinglian
language; but he borrowed nothing from the Reformer of Zurich. He was
quite willing to accept Zwingli's exegesis so far as the words went; but
he gave another and altogether different meaning to Zwingli's phrase,
_This signifies My Body_. He was willing to call the "elements" _signs_
of the Body and Blood of the Lord; but while Zwingli called them signs
which _represent_ (_signa representativa_) what was _absent_, Calvin
insisted on calling them signs which _exhibit_ (_signa exhibitiva_) what
was _present_--a distinction which is continually forgotten in
describing his relation to the theories of Zwingli, and one which
enabled him to convince Luther that he held that there was a Real
Presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. To
describe minutely Calvin's doctrine of the Holy Supper would require
more space than can be given here, and a brief statement of the central
thoughts is alone possible. His aim in common with all the Reformers was
to construct a doctrine of the Sacrament of the Supper which would be at
once scriptural, free from superstition and from the crass materialist
associations which had gathered round the theory of transubstantiation,
and which would clearly conserve the great Reformation proclamation of
the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He went back to the mediæval
idea of transubstantiation, and asked whether it gave a true conception
of what was meant by _substance_. He decided that it did not, and
believed that the root thought in _substance_ was not dimensions in
space, but power. The _substance_ of a body consists in its _power_,
active and passive, and the _presence_ of the _substance_ of anything
consists in the immediate application of that power.[40] When Luther and
Zwingli had spoken of the _substance_ of the Body of Christ, they had
always in their mind the thought of something extended in space; and the
one affirmed while the other denied that this Body of Christ, something
extended in space, could be and was present in the Sacrament of the
Supper. Calvin's conception of _substance_ enabled him to say that
wherever anything acts there it is. He denied the crude "substantial"
presence which Luther insisted on; and in this he sided with Zwingli.
But he affirmed a real because active presence, and in this he sided
with Luther.
Calvin's view had been accepted definitely by Melanchthon, and somewhat
indefinitely by Luther. The imperial cities, led by Strassburg, which
was under the influence of Bucer, who had thought out for himself a
doctrine not unlike that of Calvin, had been included in the Wittenberg
Concord (May 1536); but Luther would have nothing to do with the Swiss.
As it was vain to hope that Switzerland would be included in any
Lutheran alliance, Calvin set himself to produce dogmatic harmony in
Switzerland. In conjunction with Bullinger, Zwingli's son-in-law and
successor in Zurich, he drafted the _Consensus of Zurich_ (_Consensus
Tigurinus_) in 1549.[41] The document is Calvinist in theology and
largely Zwinglian in language. It was accepted with some difficulty in
Basel and in Bern, and heartily in Biel, Schaffhausen, Mühlhausen, and
St. Gallen. It ended dogmatic disputes in Protestant Switzerland, which
was thus united under the one creed.
This does not mean any increase of Protestantism within Switzerland. The
Romanist cantons drew more closely together. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo of
Milan took a deep interest in the Counter-Reformation in Switzerland. He
introduced the Jesuits into Luzern and the Forest cantons, and after his
death these cantons formed a league which included Luzern, Uri, Schwyz,
Zug, Unterwalden, Freiburg, and Solothurn (1586). This League (_the
Borromean League_) pledged its members to maintain the Roman Catholic
faith. The lines of demarcation between Protestant and Romanist cantons
in Switzerland practically survive to the present day.
CHAPTER III.
THE REFORMATION IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.[42]
§ 1. _Geneva._
Geneva, which was to be the citadel of the Reformed faith in Europe, had
a history which prepared it for the part it was destined to play.
The ancient constitution of the town, solemnly promulgated in 1387,
recognised three different authorities within its walls: the Bishop, who
was the sovereign or "Prince" of the city; the Count, who had possession
of the citadel; and the Free Burghers. The first act of the Bishop on
his nomination was to go to the Church of St. Peter and swear on the
Missal that he would maintain the civic rights. The House of Savoy had
succeeded to the countship of Geneva, and they were represented within
the town by a viceroy, who was called the Count or _Vidomne_. He was the
supreme justiciary. The citizens were democratically organised. They met
once a year in a recognised civic assembly to elect four Syndics to be
their rulers and representatives. It was the Syndics who in their
official capacity heard the oaths of the Bishop and of the Vidomne to
uphold the rights and privileges of the town. They kept order within the
walls from sunrise to sunset.
These three separate authorities were frequently in conflict, and in the
triangular duel the citizens and the Bishop were generally in alliance
against the House of Savoy and its viceroy. The consequence was that few
mediæval cities under ecclesiastical rule were more loyal than Geneva
was to its Bishop, so long as he respected the people's rights and stood
by them against their feudal lords when they attempted oppression.
In the years succeeding 1444 the hereditary loyalty to their bishops had
to stand severe tests. Count Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, one of the most
remarkable men of the fifteenth century,--he ascended the papal throne
and resigned the Pontificate to become a hermit,--used his pontifical
power to possess himself of the bishopric. From that date onwards the
Bishop of Geneva was almost always a member of the House of Savoy, and
the rights of the citizens were for the most part disregarded. The
bishopric became an appanage of Savoy, and boys (one of ten years of
age, another of seventeen) and bastards ruled from the episcopal chair.
After long endurance a party formed itself among the townspeople vowed
to restore the old rights of the city. They called themselves, or were
named by others, the _Eidguenots_ (_Eidgenossen_); while the partisans
of the Bishop and of the House of Savoy were termed _Mamelukes_,
because, it was said, they had forsaken Christianity.
In their difficulties the Genevans turned to the Swiss cantons nearest
them and asked to be allied with Freiburg and Bern. Freiburg consented,
and an alliance was made in 1519; but Bern, an aristocratic republic,
was unwilling to meddle in the struggle of a democracy in a town outside
the Swiss Confederacy. The citizens of Bern, more sympathetic than their
rulers, compelled them to make alliance with Geneva in 1526,--very
half-heartedly on the part of the Bernese Council.
The Swiss cantons, Bern especially, could not in their own interest see
the patriotic party in Geneva wholly crushed, and the "gate of Western
Switzerland" left completely in possession of the House of Savoy.
Therefore, when the Bishop assembled an army for the purpose of
effectually crushing all opposition within the town, Bern and Freiburg
collected their forces and routed the troops of Savoy. But the allies,
instead of using to the full the advantage they had gained, were content
with a compromise by which the Bishop remained the lord of Geneva, while
the rights of the Vidomne were greatly curtailed, and the privileges of
the townsmen were to be respected (Oct. 19th, 1530).
From this date onwards Geneva was governed by what was called _le Petit
Conseil_, and was generally spoken of as the Council; then a _Council of
Two Hundred_, framed on the model of those of Freiburg and Bern; lastly,
by the _Conseil General_, or assembly of the citizens. All important
transactions were first submitted to and deliberated on by the _Petit
Conseil_, which handed them on with their opinion of what ought to be
done to the _Council of the Two Hundred_. No change of situation--for
example, the adoption of the Reformation--was finally adopted until
submitted to the _General Council_ of all the burghers.
It is possible that had there seemed to be any immediate prospects that
Geneva would join the Reformation, Bern would have aided the patriots
more effectually. Bern was the great Protestant Power in Western
Switzerland. Its uniform policy, since 1528, had been to constitute
itself the protector of towns and districts where a majority of the
inhabitants were anxious to take the side of the Reformation and were
hindered by their overlords. It made alliances with the towns in the
territories of the Bishop of Basel, and enabled them to assert their
independence. In May (23rd) 1532 it warned the Duke of Savoy that if he
thought of persecuting the inhabitants of Payerne because of their
religion, it would make their cause its own, and declared that its
alliance with the town was much more ancient than any existing between
Bern and the Duke.[43] But the case of Geneva was different. Signs,
indeed, were not lacking that many of the people were inclined to the
Reformation.[44] It is more than probable that some of the members of
the Councils were longing for a religious reform. But however much in
earnest the reformers might be, they were in a minority, and it was no
part of the policy of Bern to interfere without due call in the internal
administration of the city; still less to see the rise of a strong and
independent Roman Catholic city-republic on its own western border.
Suddenly, in the middle of 1532, Geneva was thrown into a state of
violent religious commotion. Pope Clement VII. had published an
Indulgence within the city on the usual conditions. On the morning of
June 9th, the citizens found posted up on all the doors of the churches
great printed placards, announcing that "plenary pardon would be granted
to every one for all their sins on the one condition of repentance, and
a living faith in the promises of Jesus Christ." The city was moved to
its depths. Priests rushed to tear the placards down. "Lutherans"
interfered. Tumults ensued; and one of the canons of the cathedral,
Pierre Werly, was wounded in the arm.[45]
The Romanists, both inside and outside the town, were inclined to
believe that the affair meant more than it really did. Freiburg had been
very suspicious of the influence of the great Protestant canton of Bern,
perhaps not without reason. In March (7th) 1532, the deputies of Geneva
had been blamed by the inhabitants of Freiburg for being inclined to
Lutheranism, and it is more than likely that the Evangelicals of Geneva
had some private dealings with the Council of Bern, and had been told
that the times were not ripe for any open action on the part of the
Protestant canton. The affair of the placards, witnessing as it did the
increased strength of the Evangelical party, reawakened suspicions and
intensified alarms. A deputy from Freiburg appeared before the Council
of Geneva, complaining of the placards,[46] and of the distribution of
heretical literature in the city of Geneva (June 24th). The Papal Nuncio
wrote from Chambéry (July 8th), asking if it were true, as was publicly
reported, that the Lutheran heresy was openly professed and taught in
the houses, churches, and even in the schools of Geneva.[47] The letter
of the Nuncio was dismissed with a careless answer; but Freiburg had to
be contented. Two extracts from the Register of the Council quoted by
Herminjard show their anxiety to satisfy Freiburg and yet bear evidence
of a very moderate zeal for the Romanist religion. They decided (June
29th) that no schoolmaster was to be allowed to preach in the town
unless specially licensed by the vicar or the Syndics; and (June 30th)
they resolved to request the vicar to see that the Gospel and the
Epistle of the day were read "truthfully without being mixed up with
fables and other inventions of men"; they added that they meant to live
as their fathers, without any innovations.[48]
The excitement had not died down when Farel arrived in the city in the
autumn of 1532. He preached quietly in houses; but his coming was known,
and led to some tumults. He and his companions, Saunier and Olivétan,
were seized and sent out of the city. The Reformation had begun, and, in
spite of many hindrances, was destined to be successful.
§ 2. _The Reformation in Western Switzerland._
The conversion of Geneva to the Reformed faith was the crown of a work
which had been promoted by the canton of Bern ever since its Council had
decided, in 1528, to adopt the Reformation. Bern itself belonged to
German-speaking Switzerland, but it had extensive possessions in the
French-speaking districts. It was the only State strong enough to
confront the Dukes of Savoy, and was looked upon as a natural protector
against that House and other feudal principalities. Its position may be
seen in its relations to the Pays de Vaud. The Pays de Vaud consisted of
a confederacy of towns and small feudal estates owning fealty to the
House of Savoy. The nobles, the towns, and in some instances the clergy,
sent deputies to a Diet which met at Moudon under the presidency of the
"governor and bailli de Vaud," who represented the Duke of Savoy. A
large portion of the country had broken away from Savoy at different
periods during the fifteenth century. Lausanne and eight other smaller
towns and districts formed the patrimony of the Prince-Bishop of
Lausanne. The cantons of Freiburg and Bern ruled jointly over Orbe,
Grandson, and Morat. Bern had become the sole ruler over what were
called the four commanderies of Aigle, Ormonts, Ollon, and Bex. These
four commanderies were outlying portions of Bern, and were entirely
under the rule of its Council. When Bern had accepted the Reformation,
it naturally wished its dependencies to follow its example; and its
policy was always directed to induce other portions of the Pays de Vaud
to become Protestant also. Farel, the Apostle of French-speaking
Switzerland, might almost be called an agent of the Council of Bern.
Its method of work may be best seen by taking the examples of Aigle and
Lausanne, the one its own possession and the other belonging to the
Prince-Bishop, who was its political ruler.
William Farel, once a member of the "group of Meaux," whom we have
already seen active at the Disputation in Bern in the beginning of 1528,
had settled at Aigle in 1526, probably by the middle of November.[49] He
did so, he says in his memoir to the Council of Bern--
"With the intention of opening a school to instruct the youth in
virtue and learning, and in order to procure for myself the
necessities of life. Received at once with brotherly good-will by
some of the burghers of the place, I was asked by them to preach
the Word of God before the Governor, who was then at Bern, had
returned. I acceded to their request. But as soon as the Governor
returned I asked his permission to keep the school, and by
acquaintances also asked him to permit me to preach. The Governor
acceded to their request, but on condition that I preached nothing
but the pure simple clear Word of God according to the Old and New
Testament, without any addition contrary to the Word, and without
attacking the Holy Sacraments.... I promised to conform myself to
the will of the Governor, and declared myself ready to submit to
any punishment he pleased to inflict upon me if I disobeyed his
orders or acted in any way recognised to be contrary to the Word of
God."[50]
This was the beginning of a work which gradually spread over
French-speaking Switzerland.
The Bishop of Sion, within whose diocese Aigle was situated, published
an order forbidding all wandering preachers who had not his episcopal
licence from preaching within the confines of his diocese; and this
appears to have been used against Farel. Some representation must have
been made to the Council of Bern, who indignantly declared that no one
was permitted to publish citations, excommunications, interdicts, _ne
autres fanfares_ within their territories; but at the same time ordered
Farel to cease preaching, because he had never been ordained a priest
(February 22nd, 1527).[51] The interdict did not last very long; for a
minute of Council (March 8th) says, "Farel is permitted to preach at
Aigle until the Coadjutor sends another capable priest."[52] Troubles
arose from priests and monks, but upon the whole the Council of Bern
supported him; and Haller and others wrote from Bern privately,
beseeching him to persevere.[53] He remained, and the number of those
who accepted the Evangelical faith under his ministry increased
gradually until they appear to have been the majority of the people.[54]
He confessed himself that what hindered him most was his denunciation of
the prevailing immoralities. At the Disputation in Bern, Farel was
recognised to be one of the ablest theologians present, and to have
contributed in no small degree to the success of the conference. The
Council of Bern saw in him the instrument best fitted for the
evangelisation of their French-speaking population. He returned to Aigle
under the protection of the Council, who sent a herald with him to
ensure that he should be treated with all respect, and gave him besides
an "open letter," ordering their officials to render him all assistance
everywhere within their four commanderies.[55] He was recognised to be
the evangelist of the Council of Bern. This did not prevent occasional
disturbances, riots promoted by priests and monks, who set the bells
a-ringing to drown the preacher's voice, and sometimes procured men to
beat drums at the doors of the churches in which he was preaching. His
success, however, was so great, that when the commissioners of Bern
visited their four commanderies they found that three of them were ready
by a majority of votes to adopt the Reformation (March 2nd, 1528). The
adoption of the Reformation was signified by the removal of altars and
images, and by the abolition of the Mass.
In the parishes where a majority of the people declared for the
Reformation, the Council of Bern issued instructions about the order of
public worship and other ecclesiastical rites. Thus we find them
intimating to their Governor at Aigle that they expected the people to
observe the same form of Baptism, of the Table of the Lord, and of the
celebration of marriage, as was in use at Bern (April 25th, 1528).[56]
The Bern Liturgy, obligatory in all the German-speaking districts of the
canton, was not imposed on the Romance Churches until 1552. Then, in
July (1528), the Governor is informed that--
"My Lords have resolved to allow to the preachers Farel and Simon
'pour leur prébende' two hundred florins of Savoy annually, and a
house with a court, and a kitchen garden. But if they prefer to
have the old revenues of the parish cures ... my Lords are willing.
If, on the contrary, they take the two hundred florins, you are to
sell the ecclesiastical goods, and you are to collect the
hundredths and the tithes, and out of all you are to pay the two
hundred florins annually."[57]
The pastors preferred to take the place of the Romanist incumbents, and
there is accordingly another minute sent to the Castellan, syndic, and
parishioners of Aigle, ordering Farel to be placed in possession of the
ecclesiastical possessions of the parish, "seeing that it is reasonable
that the pastor should have his portion of the fruits of the sheep."[58]
The history of Aigle was repeated over and over again in other parts of
western Switzerland. In the bailiwicks which Bern and Freiburg ruled
jointly, Bern insisted on freedom of preaching, and on the right of the
people to choose whether they would remain Romanists or become
Protestants. Commissioners from the two cantons presided when the votes
were given.
Farel was too valuable to be left as pastor of a small district like
Aigle. We find him making wide preaching tours, always protected by Bern
when protection was possible. It was the rooted belief of the
Protestants that a public Disputation on matters of religion in presence
of the people, the speakers using the language understood by the crowd,
always resulted in spreading the Reformation; and Bern continually tried
to get such conferences in towns where the authorities were Romanist.
Their first interference in the ecclesiastical affairs of Lausanne was
of this kind. It seems that some of the priests of Lausanne had accused
Farel of being a heretic; whereupon the Council of Bern demanded that
Farel should be heard before the Bishop of Lausanne's tribunal, in order
to prove that he was no heretic. The claim led to a long correspondence.
The Bishop continually refused; while the Council and citizens seemed
inclined to grant the request. Farel could not get a hearing before the
episcopal tribunal, but he visited the town, and on the second occasion
was permitted by the Council to preach to the people. This occurred
again and again; and the result was that the town became Protestant and
disowned the authority of the Bishop. Bern assisted the inhabitants to
drive the Bishop away, and to become a free municipality and Protestant.
Gradually Farel had become the leader of an organised band of
missioners, who devoted themselves to the evangelisation of western or
French-speaking Switzerland.[59] They had been carefully selected--young
men for the most part well educated, of unbounded courage, willing to
face all the risks of their dangerous work, daunted by no threat or
peril, taking their lives in their hand. They were the forerunners of
the young preachers, teachers, and colporteurs whom Calvin trained later
in Geneva and sent forth by the hundred to evangelise France and the Low
Countries. They were all picked men. No one was admitted to the little
band without being well warned of the hazardous work before him, and
some who were ready to take all the risks were rejected because the
leader was not sure that they had the necessary powers of endurance.[60]
These preachers were under the protection of the canton of Bern, whose
authorities were resolute to maintain the freedom to preach the Word of
God; but they continually went where the Bernese had no power to assist
them; nor could the protection of that powerful canton aid them in
sudden emergencies when bitter Romanist partisans, infuriated by the
invectives with which the preachers lashed the abuses of the Roman
religion, or wrathful at their very presence, stirred up the mob against
them. When their correspondence and that of their opponents--a
correspondence collected and carefully edited by M. Herminjard--is read,
it can be seen that they could always count on a certain amount of
sympathy from the people of the towns and villages where they preached,
but that the authorities were for the most part hostile. If Bern
insisted on their protection, Freiburg was as active in opposing them,
and lost no opportunity of urging the local authorities to harass them
in every way, to silence their preaching, and if possible to expel them
from their territories.
Such men had the defects of their qualities. Their zeal often outran
their discretion. When Farel and Froment, the most daring and devoted of
his band, were preaching at a village in the vale of Villingen, a priest
began to chant the Mass beside them. As the priest elevated the Host,
Froment seized it and, turning towards the people, said, "This is not
the God to adore; He is in the Heaven in the glory of the Father, not in
the hands of the priests as you believe, and as they teach." There was a
riot, of course, but the preachers escaped. Next day, however, as they
were passing a solitary place, they were assailed by a crowd of men and
women, stoned and beaten with clubs, then hurried away to a neighbouring
castle whose chatelaine had instigated the attack. There they were
thrust violently into the chapel, and the crowd tried to make Farel
prostrate himself before an image of the Blessed Virgin. He resisted,
admonishing them to adore the one God in spirit and in truth, not dumb
images without sense or power. The crowd beat him to the effusion of
blood, and the two preachers were dragged to a vault, where they were
imprisoned until rescued by the authorities of Neuchâtel.[61]
These preachers were all Frenchmen or French-Swiss. They had the hot
Celtic blood in their veins, and their hearers were their kith and
kin--prompt to act, impetuous when their passions were stirred. Scenes
occurred at their preaching which we seldom hear of among slower
Germans, who generally waited until their authorities led. In western
Switzerland the audiences were eager to get rid of the idolatries
denounced. At Grandson, the people rushed to the church of the
Cordeliers, and tore down the altars and images, while the crosses,
altars, and images of the parish church were also destroyed.[62]
Similar tumults took place at Orbe; and the authorities at Bern, who
desired to see liberty for both Protestants and Romanists, had occasion
to rebuke the zealous preachers.
But the dangers which the missioners ran were not always of their own
provoking. Sometimes a crowd of women invaded the churches in which they
preached, interrupted the services with shoutings, hustled and beat the
preachers; sometimes when they addressed the people in the market-place
the preachers and their audience were assailed with showers of stones;
sometimes Farel and his companions were laid wait for and
maltreated.[63] M. de Watteville, sent down by the authorities of Bern
to report on disturbances, wrote to the Council of Bern that the faces
of the preachers were so torn that it looked as if they had been
fighting with cats, and that on one occasion the alarm-bell had been
sounded against them, as was the custom for a wolf-hunt.[64]
No dangers daunted the missioners, and soon the whole of the outlying
districts of Bern, Neuchâtel, Soleure, and other French-speaking
portions of Switzerland declared for the Reformation. The cantonal
authorities frequently sent down commissioners to ascertain the wishes
of the people; and when the majority of the inhabitants voted for the
Evangelical religion, the church, parsonage, and stipend were given to a
Protestant pastor. Many of Farel's missioners were temporarily settled
in these village churches; but they were for the most part better fitted
for pioneer work than for a settled pastorate. In January (9-14th) 1532,
a synod of these Protestant pastors was held at Bern to deliberate on
some uniform ways of exercising their ministry to prevent disorders
arising from individual caprice. Two hundred and thirty ministers were
present, and Bucer was brought from Strassburg to give them guidance.
His advice was greatly appreciated and followed by the delegates of the
churches and the Council of Bern. The Synod in the end issued an
elaborate ordinance, which included a lengthy exposition of
doctrine.[65]
§ 3. _Farel in Geneva._
It was after this consolidation of the Reformation in Bern and its
outlying provinces that Farel found himself free to turn his attention
to Geneva. He had evidently been thinking for months about the
possibility of evangelising the town. He had little fear of the people
themselves, and he wrote to Zwingli (Oct. 1st, 1531) that were it not
for the dread of Freiburg, he believed that the Genevese would welcome
the Gospel.[66] The affair of the "placards" seems to have decided him
to begin his mission in the city. When he was driven out he was far from
abandoning the enterprise. He turned to Froment, his most trusted
assistant, and sent him into Geneva.
Antoine Froment, who has the honour along with Farel of being the
Reformer of Geneva, was born at Tries, near Grenoble, about 1510. He was
therefore, like Farel, a native of Dauphiné. Like him, also, he had gone
to Paris for his education, and had become acquainted with Lefèvre, who
seems to have introduced him to Marguerite d'Angoulême, the Queen of
Navarre,[67] as he received from her a prebend in a canonry on one of
her estates. How he came to Switzerland is unknown. Once there and
introduced to Farel, he became his most daring and enthusiastic
disciple, and Farel prized him above all the others. They were Paul and
Timothy. It was natural that Farel should entrust him with the difficult
and dangerous task of preaching the Gospel in Geneva.
Farel's seizure and expulsion made it necessary to proceed with caution.
Froment entered Geneva (Nov. 3rd, 1532), and began his work by
intimating by public advertisement (_placard_) that he was ready to
teach any one who wished to learn to read and write the French language,
and that he would charge no fees if his pupils were not able to profit
by his instructions. Scholars came.[68] He managed to mingle Evangelical
instruction with his lessons,--"every day one or two sermons from the
Holy Scripture," he says,--and soon made many converts, especially among
the wives of influential citizens. Towards the end of 1532, the monks of
one of the convents in Geneva had brought to the city a Dominican,
Christopher Bocquet, to be their Advent preacher. His sermons seem to
have been largely Evangelical, and had the effect of inducing many of
the citizens to attend Froment's discourses in the hall where he kept
his school.[69] This provoked threats on the part of the Romanists, and
strongly worded sermons from the priests and Romanist orators. One
citizen, convicted of having spoken disrespectfully of the Mass, was
banished, and forbidden to return on pain of death. On this the
Evangelicals of the town appealed to Bern. Their letter was promptly
answered by a demand on the part of the Council of that canton that the
Evangelicals must be left in peace, and if attacked publicly must be
allowed to answer in as public a fashion.[70] When their letter was read
in the Council of Geneva, it provoked some protests from the more
ardently Romanist members, and the priests stirred up part of the
population to riotous proceedings, in which the lives of the
Evangelicals were threatened. The Syndics and Council had difficulty in
preventing conflicts in the streets. They published a decree (March
30th, 1533), in which they practically proclaimed liberty of conscience,
but forbade all insulting expressions, all attacks on the Sacraments or
on the ecclesiastical fasts and ceremonies, and again ordered preachers
to say nothing which could not be proved from Holy Scripture.[71]
The numbers of the Evangelicals increased daily; they became bolder, and
on the 10th of April they met in a garden, under the presidency of
Guérin Muète, a hosier, for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. This
became known to the Romanists, and there was a renewal of the threats
against the Evangelicals, which came to a head in the riot of the 5th of
May--a riot which had important consequences.[72] It seems that while
several citizens, known to belong to the Evangelical party, were walking
in the square before the Cathedral of St. Peter, they were attacked by a
band of armed priests, and three of them were severely wounded. The
leader of the band, a turbulent priest named Pierre Werly, who belonged
to an old family of Freiburg, and was a canon in the cathedral, followed
by five or six others, rushed down to the broad street Molard, with loud
shouts. Werly was armed with one of the huge Swiss swords. He and his
companions attacked the Evangelicals; there was a sharp, short fight;
several persons were wounded severely, and Werly, "the captain of the
priests," was slain.[73] The affair made a great noise. The Romanists at
once proclaimed Werly a martyr, and honoured him with a pompous funeral.
Freiburg insisted that all the Evangelicals who happened to be in the
Molard should be arrested; and it was said that preparations were being
made for a massacre of all the followers of the Reformation. In their
extremity they again appealed to Bern, whose authorities again
interfered for their protection.
During these troublesome times the position of the Council of Geneva was
one of great difficulty. The Prince-Bishop of Geneva, Pierre de la
Baume, was still nominally sovereign, secular as well as ecclesiastical
ruler. His secular powers had been greatly curtailed, how much it is
difficult to say, but certainly to the extent that the criminal
administration of the city and the territory subject to it was in the
hands of the Council and Syndics. Freiburg, one of the two protecting
cantons, insisted that all the ecclesiastical authority was still in the
hands of the Bishop, to be administered in his absence by his vicar.[74]
The Councils, although they had passed decrees (June 30th, 1532, and
March 30th, 1533) which had distinctly to do with ecclesiastical
matters, acknowledged for the most part that the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction did not belong to them. But the whole of the inhabitants
were not contented with this diminution of the episcopal authority.
Turbulent priests and the yet more violent canons,[75] the great body of
monks and nuns, wished, and intrigued for the restoration of the rule of
the Bishop and of the House of Savoy. The beginnings of a movement for
Reformation had increased the difficulties of the Council; it brought a
third party into the town. The Evangelicals were all strongly opposed to
the rule of the Bishop and Savoy, and they were fast growing in
strength; a powerful minority of Roman Catholics were no less strongly
in favour of a return to the old condition. The majority of the Roman
Catholic citizens, opposed to the Bishop as a secular ruler, had no
desire for the triumph of the Reformation. As time went on, it was seen
that these moderate Romanists had to choose between a return of the old
disorderly rule of the Bishop, or to acquiesce in the ecclesiastical as
well as the secular superiority of the Council, pressed by the
Protestant canton of Bern. The Savoyard party evidently believed that
their hatred of the Reformation would be stronger than their dislike to
the Savoyard and episcopal rule--a mistaken belief, as events were to
show.
The policy of Bern, wherever its influence prevailed in western
Switzerland, was exerted to secure toleration for all Evangelicals, and
to procure, if possible, a public discussion on matters of religion
between the Romanists and leading Reformers. They pressed this over and
over again on their allies of Geneva. As early as April 1533, they had
insisted that a monk who had offered to refute Farel should be kept to
his word, and that the Council of Geneva should arrange for a Public
Disputation.[76] Towards the close of the year an event occurred which
gave them a pretext for decisive interference.
Guy Furbiti, a renowned Roman Catholic preacher, a learned theologian, a
doctor of the Sorbonne, had been brought to Geneva to be Advent
preacher. He used the occasion to denounce vigorously the doctrines of
the Evangelicals, supporting his statements, as he afterwards confessed,
not from Scripture, but from the Decretals and from the writings of
Thomas Aquinas. He ended his sermon (Dec. 2nd) with the words: "Where
are those fine preachers of the fireside, who say the opposite? If they
showed themselves here one could speak to them. Ha! ha! they are well to
hide themselves in corners to deceive poor women and others who know
nothing."
After the sermon, either in church or in the square before the
cathedral, Froment cried to the crowd, "Hear me! I am ready to give my
life, and my body to be burned, to maintain that what that man has said
is nothing but falsehood and the words of Antichrist." There was a great
commotion. Some shouted, "To the fire with him! to the fire!" and tried
to seize him. The chronicler nun, Jeanne de Jussie, proud of her sex,
relates that "les femmes comme enragées sortirent après, de grande
furie, luy jettant force pierres."[77] He escaped from them. But
Alexandre Canus was banished, and forbidden to return under pain of
death; and Froment was hunted from house to house, until he found a
hiding-place in a hay-loft. Furbiti had permitted himself to attack with
strong invectives the authorities of Bern, and the Evangelicals of
Geneva in their appeal for protection sent extracts from the
sermons.[78] Bern had at last the opportunity for which its Council had
long waited.
They wrote a dignified letter (Dec. 17th, 1533) to the Council of
Geneva, in which they complained that the Genevese, their allies, had
hitherto paid little attention to their requests for a favourable
treatment of the Evangelicals; that they had expelled from the town
"nostre serviteur maistre Guillaume Farel"; not content with that, they
had recently misused their "servants" Froment and Alexandre for
protesting against the sermons of a Jacobin monk (Furbiti) who "preached
only lies, errors, and blasphemies against God, the faith, and
ourselves, wounding our honour, calling us Jews, Turks, and dogs"; that
the banishment of Alexandre and the hunting of Froment touched them (the
Council of Bern), and that they would not suffer it. They demanded the
immediate arrest of the "_caffard_"[79] (Furbiti); and they said they
were about to send an embassy to Geneva to vindicate publicly the honour
of God and their own.[80]
As the Council of Bern meant to enforce a Public Disputation, they sent
Farel to Geneva. He reached the city on the evening of December 20th.
The letter was read to the Council of Geneva upon Dec. 21st, and they at
once gave orders to the vicar to prevent Furbiti leaving the town. But
the vicar, who had resolved to try his strength against Bern, refused,
and actually published two mandates (Dec. 31st, 1533, and Jan. 1st,
1534) denouncing the Genevese Syndics, forbidding any of the citizens to
read the Holy Scriptures, and ordering all copies of translations of the
Bible, whether in German or in French, to be seized and burnt.[81] The
dispute between Syndics and vicar was signalised by riots promoted by
the extreme Romanist party. The Council, anxious not to proceed to
extremities, contented themselves with placing a guard to watch Furbiti;
and the monk was attended continually, even when he went to and from the
church, by a guard of three halberdiers.
The Bernese embassy arrived on the 4th of January, and had prolonged
audience of the Council of Geneva on the 5th and 7th. They insisted on a
fair treatment for the Evangelical party, which meant freedom of
conscience and the right of public worship, and they demanded that
Furbiti should be compelled to justify his charges against the
Evangelicals in the presence of learned men who could speak for the
Council of Bern. The Genevan authorities had no wish to break
irrevocably with their Bishop, nor to coerce the ecclesiastical
authorities; they pleaded that Furbiti was not under their jurisdiction,
and they referred the Bernese deputies to the Bishop or his vicar. "We
have been ordered to apply to you," said the deputies from Bern. "Your
answer makes us see that you seek delay, and that you are not treating
us fairly; that you think little of the honour of the Council of Bern.
Here is the treaty of alliance (they produced the document), and we are
about to tear off the seals." This was the formal way among the Swiss of
cancelling a treaty. The Councillors of Geneva then proposed that they
should compel the monk to appear before them and the deputies of Bern,
when explanations might be demanded from him. The deputies accepted the
offer, but on condition that there should be a conference between the
monk (Furbiti) and theologians sent from Bern (Farel and Viret). Next
day Furbiti was taken from the episcopal palace and placed in the town's
prison (Jan. 8th), and on the morrow (Jan. 9th) he was brought before
the Council. There he refused to plead before secular judges. The
Council of Geneva tried in vain to induce the vicar to nominate an
ecclesiastical delegate who was to sit in the Council and be present at
the conference. Their negotiations with the vicar, carried on for some
days, were in vain. Then they attempted to induce the Bernese to depart
from their conditions. The Council of Bern was immovable. It insisted on
the immediate payment by the Genevese of the debt due to Bern for the
war of deliverance and for the punishment of Furbiti (Jan. 25th, 1534).
Driven to the wall, the Council of Geneva resolved to override the
ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop and his vicar. Furbiti was
compelled to appear before the Council and the deputies of Bern, and to
answer to Farel and Viret on Jan. 27th and Feb. 3rd (1534). On the
afternoon of the latter day the partisans of the Bishop got up another
riot, in which one of them poniarded an Evangelical, Nicolas Bergier.
This riot seems to have exhausted the patience of the peaceable citizens
of Geneva, whether Romanists or Evangelicals. A band of about five
hundred assembled armed before the Town Hall, informed the Council that
they would no longer tolerate riots caused by turbulent priests, and
that they were ready to support civic authority and put down lawlessness
with a strong hand. The Council thereupon acted energetically. That
night the murderer, Claude Pennet, who had hid himself in the belfry of
the cathedral, was dragged from his place of concealment, tried next
day, and hanged on the day following (Feb. 5th). The houses of the
principal rioters were searched, and letters discovered proving a plot
to seize the town and deliver it into the hands of the Bishop. Pierre de
la Baume had gone the length of nominating a member of the Council of
Freiburg, M. Pavillard, to act as his deputy in secular affairs, and
ordering him to massacre the Evangelicals within the city.
When the excitement had somewhat died down, the deputies of Bern pressed
for a renewal of the proceedings against Furbiti. The monk was again
brought before the Council, and confronted by Farel and Viret. He was
forced to confess that he could not prove his assertions from the Holy
Scriptures, but had based them on the Decretals and the writings of
Thomas Aquinas, admitting that he had transgressed the regulations of
the Council of Geneva. He promised that, if allowed to preach on the
following Sunday (Feb. 15th), he would make public reparation to the
Council of Bern. When Sunday came he refused to keep his promise, and
was sent back to prison.[82]
Meanwhile the Evangelical community in Geneva was growing, and taking
organised form. One of the most prominent of the Genevan Evangelicals,
Jean Baudichon de la Maisonneuve, prepared a hall by removing a
partition between two rooms in his magnificent house, situated in that
part of the city which was the cradle of the Reformation in Geneva.
There Farel, Viret, and Froment preached to three or four hundred
persons; and there the first baptism according to the Reformed rite was
celebrated in Geneva (Feb. 22nd, 1533). The audiences soon increased
beyond the capacity of the hall, and the Evangelicals, protected by the
presence of the Bernese deputies, took possession of the large audience
hall or church of the Convent of the Cordeliers in the same street
(March 1st). The deputies from Bern frequently asked the Council of
Geneva to grant the use of one of the churches of the town for the
Evangelicals, but were continually answered that the Council had not the
power, but that they would not object if the Evangelicals found a
suitable place. This indirect authorisation enabled them to meet in the
convent church, which held between four and five thousand people, and
which was frequently filled. Thus the little band increased. Farel
preached for the first time in St. Peter's on the 8th of August 1535.
Services were held in other houses also.[83]
The Bishop of Geneva, foiled in his attempt to regain possession of the
town by well-planned riots, united himself with the Duke of Savoy to
conquer the city by force of arms. Their combined forces advanced
against Geneva; they overran the country, seized and pillaged the
country houses of the citizens, and subjected the town itself to a
close investment. The war was a grievous matter for the city, but it
furthered the Reformation. The Bishop had leagued himself with the old
enemy of Geneva; the priests, the monks, the nuns were eager for his
success; he compelled patriotic Roman Catholics to choose between their
religion and their country. It was also a means of displaying the
heroism of the Protestant pastors. Farel and Froment were high-spirited
Frenchmen, who scoffed at any danger lying in the path of duty. They had
braved a thousand perils in their missionary work. Viret was not less
courageous. The three worked on the fortifications with the citizens;
they shared the watches of the defenders; they encouraged the citizens
by word and deed. The Genevese were prepared for any sacrifices to
preserve their liberties. Four faubourgs, which formed a second town
almost as large as the first, were ordered to be demolished to
strengthen the defence. The city was reduced to great straits, and the
citizens of Bern seemed to be deaf to their cries for help.
Bern was doing its best by embassies to assist them; but it dared not
attack the Pays de Vaud when Freiburg, angry at the process of the
Reformation, threatened a counter attack. After the siege was raised,
the strongholds in the surrounding country remained in the possession of
the enemy, and the people belonging to Geneva were liable to be pillaged
and maltreated.
Within the city the number of Evangelicals increased week by week. Then
came a sensational event which brought about the ruin of the Roman
Catholic party. A woman, Antonia Vax, cook in the house of Claude
Bernard, with whom the three pastors dwelt, attempted to poison Viret,
Farel, and Froment.[84] The confession of the prisoner, combined with
other circumstances, created the impression among the members of Council
and the people of Geneva that the priests of the town had instigated the
attempt, and a strong feeling in favour of the Protestant pastors swept
over the city. The Council at once provided lodging for Viret and Farel
in the Convent of the Cordeliers. When the guardian of that convent
asked leave to hold public discussions on religious questions in the
great church belonging to the convent, it was at once granted.
The Council itself made arrangements for the public Disputation. Five
_Thèses évangéliques_ were drafted by the Protestant pastors, and the
Council invited discussion upon them from all and sundry.[85]
Invitations were sent to the canons of the cathedral, and to all the
priests and monks of Geneva; safe-conducts were promised to all foreign
theologians who desired to take part;[86] a special attempt was made to
induce a renowned Paris Roman Catholic champion, Pierre Cornu, a
theologian trained at the Sorbonne, who happened to be at Grenoble, to
defend the Romanist position by attacking the _Theses_. The _Theses_
themselves were posted up in Geneva as early as the 1st of May (1535),
and copies were sent to all the priests and convents within the
territories of the Genevans.[87]
The Disputation was fixed to open on the 30th of May. The Council
nominated eight commissioners, half of whom were Roman Catholics, to
maintain order, and four secretaries to keep minutes of the
proceedings.[88] Efforts were made to induce Roman Catholic theologians
of repute for their learning to attend and attack the _Theses_. But the
Bishop of Geneva had forbidden the Disputation, and the Council were
unable to prevail on any stranger to appear. When the opening day
arrived, and the Council, commissioners, and secretaries were solemnly
seated in their places in the great hall of the convent, no Romanist
defender of the faith appeared to impugn the Evangelical _Theses_. Farel
and Viret nevertheless expounded and defended. The Disputation continued
at intervals during four weeks, till the 24th of June, Romanist
champions accepted the Reformers' challenge--Jean Chapuis, prior of the
Dominican convent at Plainpalais, near Geneva, and Jean Cachi, confessor
to the Sisters of St. Clara in the city. But they were no match for men
like Farel. Chapuis himself apologised for the absence of the Genevan
priests and monks, by saying that even in his convent there was a lack
of learned men. The weakness of the Romanist defence made a great
impression on the people of Geneva. They went about saying to each
other, "If all Christian princes permitted a free discussion like our
MM. of Geneva, the affair would soon be settled without burnings, or
slaughter, or murders; but the Pope and his followers, the cardinals and
the bishops and the priests, know well that if free discussion is
permitted all is lost for them. So all these powers forbid any
discussion or conversation save by fire and by sword." They knew that
all throughout Romance Switzerland the Reformers, whether in a minority
or in a majority, were eager for a public discussion.
When the Disputation was ended, Farel urged the Council to declare
themselves on the side of the Reformation; but they hesitated until
popular tumults forced their hand. On July 23rd, Farel preached in the
Church of the Madeleine. The Council made mild remonstrances. Then he
preached in the Church of St. Gervais. Lastly, on the 8th of August, the
people forced him to preach in the Cathedral, St. Peter's (Aug. 8th). In
the afternoon the priests were at vespers as usual. As they chanted the
Psalm--
"Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not:
Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat,"
someone in the throng shouted, "You curse, as you chant, all who make
graven images and trust in them. Why do you let them remain here?" It
was the signal for a tumult. The crowd rushed to throw to the ground and
break in pieces the statues of the saints; and the children pushing
among the crowd picked up the fragments, and rushing to the doors, said,
"We have the gods of the priests, would you like some?"[89] Next day the
riots were renewed in the parish and convent churches, and the images of
the saints were defaced or destroyed.
The Council met on the 9th, and summoned Farel before them. The minutes
state that he made an _oratio magna_, ending with the declaration that
he and his fellow-preachers were willing to submit to death if it could
be shown that they taught anything contrary to the Holy Scriptures.
Then, falling on his knees, he poured forth one of those wonderful
prayers which more than anything else exhibited the exalted enthusiasm
of the great missionary. The religious question was discussed next day
in the _Council of the Two Hundred_, when it was resolved to abolish the
Mass provisionally, to summon the monks before the Council, and to ask
them to give their reasons for maintaining the Mass and the worship of
the saints. The two Councils resolved to inform the people of Bern about
what they had done.[90]
It is evident that the two Councils had been hurried by the iconoclastic
zeal of the people along a path they had meant to tread in a much more
leisurely fashion. The political position was full of uncertainties.
Their enemies were still in the field against them. Bern seemed to be
unable to assist them. They were ready to welcome the intervention of
France. It was the fear of increasing their external troubles rather
than any zeal for the Roman Catholic faith that had prevented the
Council from espousing the Reformation immediately after the public
Disputation. "If we abolish the Mass, image worship, and everything
popish, for one enemy we have now we are sure to have an hundred," was
their thought.[91]
The official representatives of the Roman Catholic religion did not
appear to advantage at this crisis of their fate. They were in no haste
to defend their worship before the Council. When they at last appeared
(Nov. 29th, 1535), the monks in the forenoon and the secular clergy in
the afternoon, there was a careless indifference in their answers. The
Council seem to have referred them to Farel's summary of the matters
discussed in the public Disputation which began on the 30th of May, and
to have asked them what they had to say against its conclusions and in
favour of the Mass and of the adoration of the saints.[92] The monks one
after another (twelve of them appeared before the Council) answered
monotonously that they were unlearned people, who lived as they had been
taught by their fathers, and did not inquire further. The secular
clergy, by their spokesman Roletus de Pane, said that they had nothing
to do with the Disputation and what had been said there; that they had
no desire to listen to more addresses from Farel; and that they meant to
live as their predecessors.[93] This was the end. The two deputations
of monks and seculars were informed by the Council that they must cease
saying Mass until further orders were given. The Reformation was legally
established in Geneva, and the city stood forth with Bern as altogether
Protestant.[94]
The dark clouds on the political horizon were rising. France seemed
about to interfere in favour of Geneva, and the fear of France in
possession of the "gate of western Switzerland" was stronger than
reluctance to permit Geneva to become a Protestant city. The Council of
Freiburg promised to allow the Bernese army to march through their
territory. Bern renounced its alliance with Savoy on November 29th,
1535. War was declared on January 16th. The army of Bern left its
territories, gathering reinforcements as it went; for towns like
Neuville, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Payerne--oppressed Protestant communities
in Romance Switzerland--felt that the hour of their liberation was at
hand, and their armed burghers were eager to strike one good stroke at
their oppressors under the leadership of the proud republic. There was
little fighting. The greater part of the Pays de Vaud was conquered
without striking a blow, and the army of the Duke of Savoy and the
Bishop of Geneva was dispersed without a battle. A few sieges were
needed to complete the victory. The great republic, after its fashion,
had waited till the opportune moment, and then struck once and for all.
Its decisive victory brought deliverance not only to Geneva, but to
Lausanne and many other Protestant municipalities in Romance Switzerland
(Aug. 7th, 1536). The democracy of Geneva was served heir to the
seignorial rights of the Bishop, and to the sovereign rights of the Duke
of Savoy over city and lands. Geneva became an independent republic
under the protectorate of Bern, and to some extent dependent on that
canton.
In the month of December 1535, the Syndics and Council of Geneva had
adopted the legend on the coat of arms of the town, _Post tenebras
lux_--a device which became very famous, and appeared on its coinage.
The resolution of the Council of the Two Hundred to abolish the Mass and
saint worship was officially confirmed by the citizens assembled, "as
was the custom, by sound of bell and of trumpet" (May 21st, 1536).
Geneva had gained much. It had won political independence, for which it
had been fighting for thirty years, modified by its relations to
Bern,[95] but greater than it had ever before enjoyed. The Reformed
religion had been established, although the fact remained that the
Romanist partisans had still a good deal of hidden strength. But much
was still to be done to make the town the citadel of the Reformation
which it was to become. Its past history had demoralised its people. The
rule of dissolute bishops and the example of a turbulent and immoral
clergy had poisoned the morals of the city.[96] The liberty won might
easily degenerate into licence, and ominous signs were not lacking that
this was about to take place. "It is impossible to deny," says
Kampschulte, the Roman Catholic biographer of Calvin, "that disorder and
demoralisation had become threatening in Geneva; it would have been
almost a miracle had it not been so." Farel did what he could. He
founded schools. He organised the hospitals. He strove to kindle moral
life in the people of his adopted city. But his talents and his
character fitted him much more for pioneer work than for the task which
now lay before him.
Farel was a chivalrous Frenchman, born among the mountains of Dauphiné,
whose courage, amounting to reckless daring, won for him the passionate
admiration of soldiers like Wildermuth,[97] and made him volunteer to
lead any forlorn hope however desperate. He was sympathetic to
soft-heartedness, yet utterly unable to restrain his tongue; in danger
of his life one week because of his violent language, and the next
almost adored, by those who would have slain him, for the reckless way
in which he nursed the sick and dying during a visitation of the plague.
He was the brilliant partisan leader, seeing only what lay before his
eyes; incapable of self-restraint; a learned theologian, yet careless in
his expression of doctrine, and continually liable to misapprehension.
No one was better fitted to attack the enemy's strongholds, few less
able to hold them when once possessed. He saw, without the faintest
trace of jealousy--the man was too noble--others building on the
foundations he had laid. It is almost pathetic to see that none of the
Romance Swiss churches whose Apostle he had been, cared to retain him as
their permanent leader. In the closing years of his life he went back to
his beloved France, and ended as he had begun, a pioneer evangelist in
Lyons, Metz, and elsewhere,--a leader of forlorn hopes, carrying within
him a perpetual spring and the effervescing recklessness of youth. He
had early seen that the pioneer life which he led was best lived without
wife or children, and he remained unmarried until his sixty-ninth year.
Then he met with a poor widow who had lost husband and property for
religion's sake in Rouen, and had barely escaped with life. He married
her because in no other way could he find for her a home and protection.
Geneva needed a man of altogether different mould of character to do the
work that was now necessary. When Farel's anxieties and vexations were
at their height, he learned almost by accident that a distinguished
young French scholar, journeying from Ferrara to Basel, driven out of
his direct course by war, had arrived in Geneva, and was staying for a
night in the town. This was Calvin.
§ 4. _Calvin: Youth and Education._
Jean Cauvin (latinised into Calvinus) was born at Noyon in Picardy on
the 10th of July 1509. He was the second son in a family of four sons
and two daughters. His father, Gerard Cauvin, was a highly esteemed
lawyer, the confidential legal adviser of the nobility and higher clergy
of the district. His mother, Jeanne La France, a very beautiful woman,
was noted for her devout piety and her motherly affection. Calvin, who
says little about his childhood, relates how he was once taken by his
mother on the festival of St. Anna to see a relic of the saint preserved
in the Abbey of Ourscamp, near Noyon, and that he remembers kissing
"part of the body of St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary."[98]
The Cauvins belonged to what we should call the upper middle class in
social standing, and the young Jean entered the house of the noble
family of de Montmor to share the education of the children, his father
paying for all his expenses. The young de Montmors were sent to College
in Paris, and Jean Cauvin, then fourteen years of age, went with them.
This early social training never left Calvin, who was always the
reserved, polished French gentleman--a striking contrast to his great
predecessor Luther.
Calvin was a Picard, and the characteristics of the province were seen
in its greatest son. The Picards were always independent, frequently
strongly anti-clerical, combining in a singular way fervent enthusiasm
and a cold tenacity of purpose. No province in France had produced so
many sympathisers with Wiclif and Hus, and "Picards" was a term met with
as frequently on the books of Inquisitors as "Wiclifites," "Hussites,"
or "Waldenses"--all the names denoting dissenters from the mediæval
Church who accepted all the articles of the Apostles' Creed but were
strongly anti-clerical. These "brethren" lingered in all the countries
of Western Europe until the sixteenth century, and their influence made
itself felt in the beginnings of the stirrings for reform.
Gerard Cauvin had early seen that his second son, Jean, was _de bon
esprit, d'une prompte naturelle à concevoir, et inventif en l'estude des
lettres humaines_,[99] and this induced him to give the boy as good an
education as he could, and to destine him for the study of theology. His
legal connection with the higher clergy of Noyon enabled him, in the
fashion of the day, to procure for his son more than one benefice. The
boy was tonsured, a portion of the revenue was used to pay for a curate
who did the work, and the rest went to provide for the lad's education.
Young Calvin went with the three sons of the de Montmor family to the
College de la Marche in Paris. It was not a famous one, but when Calvin
studied there in the lowest class he had as his professor Mathurin
Cordier, the ablest teacher of his generation.[100] His aim was to give
his pupils a thorough knowledge of the French and Latin languages--a
foundation on which they might afterwards build for themselves. He had a
singularly sweet disposition, and a very open mind. He was brought to
know the Gospel by Robert Estienne, and in 1536 his name was inscribed,
along with those of Courat and Clement Marot, on the list of the
principal heretics in Paris. Calvin was not permitted to remain long
under this esteemed teacher. The atmosphere was probably judged to be
too liberal for one who was destined to study theology. He was
transferred to the more celebrated College de Montaigu. Calvin was again
fortunate in his principal teachers. He became the pupil of Noël Béda
and of Pierre Tempête, who taught him the art of formal disputation.
Calvin had come to Paris in his fourteenth year, and left it when he was
nineteen--the years when a lad becomes a man, and his character is
definitely formed. If we are to judge by his own future references, no
one had more formative influence over him than Mathurin Cordier--short
as had been the period of their familiar intercourse. Calvin had shown a
singularly acute mind, and proved himself to be a scholar who invariably
surpassed his fellow students. He was always surrounded by attached
friends--the three brothers de Montmor, the younger members of the
famous family of Cop, and many others. These student friends were
devoted to him all his life. Many of them settled with him at Geneva.
Calvin left the College de Montaigu in 1528. Sometime during the same
year another celebrated pupil entered it. This was Ignatius Loyola.
Whether the two great leaders attended College together, whether they
ever met, it is impossible to say--the dates are not precise enough.
"Perhaps they crossed each other in some street of Mount
Sainte-Geneviève: the young Frenchman of eighteen on horseback as
usual, and the Spaniard of six and thirty on foot, his purse
furnished with some pieces of gold he owed to charity, shoving
before him an ass burdened with his books, and carrying in his
pocket a manuscript, entitled _Exercitia Spiritualia_."[101]
Calvin left Paris because his father had now resolved that his son
should be a lawyer and not a theologian. Gerard Cauvin had quarrelled
with the ecclesiastics of Noyon, and had even been excommunicated. He
refused to render his accounts in two executry cases, and had remained
obstinate. Why he was so, it is impossible to say. His children had no
difficulty in arranging matters after his death. The quarrel ended the
hopes of the father to provide well for his son in the Church, and he
ordered him to quit Paris for the great law school at Orleans. It is by
no means improbable that the father's decision was very welcome to the
son. Bèze tells us that Calvin had already got some idea of the true
religion, had begun to study the Holy Scriptures, and to separate
himself from the ceremonies of the Church;[102]--perhaps his friendship
with Pierre Robert Olivétan, a relation, a native of Noyon, and the
translator of the Bible into French, had brought this about. The young
man went to Orleans in the early part of 1528 and remained there for a
year, then went on to Bourges, in order to attend the lectures of the
famous publicist, André Alciat, who was destined to be as great a
reformer of the study of law as Calvin was of the study of theology. In
Orleans with its Humanism, and in Bourges with its incipient
Protestantism, Calvin was placed in a position favourable for the growth
of ideas which had already taken root in his mind. At Bourges he studied
Greek under Wolmar, a Lutheran in all but the name, and dedicated to him
long afterwards his _Commentary on the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians_. He seems to have lived in the house of Wolmar; another
inmate was Théodore de Bèze, the future leader of the Protestants of
France, then a boy of twelve.
The death of his father (May 26th, 1531) left Calvin his own master. He
had obeyed the paternal wishes when he studied for the Church in Paris;
he had obediently transferred himself to the study of law; he now
resolved to follow the bent of his own mind, and, dedicating himself to
study, to become a man of letters. He returned to Paris and entered the
College Fortet, meaning to attend the lectures of the Humanist
professors whom Francis I., under the guidance of Budé and Cop, was
attracting to his capital. These "royal lecturers" and their courses of
instruction were looked on with great suspicion by the Sorbonne, and
Calvin's conduct in placing himself under their instruction showed that
he had already emancipated himself from that strict devotion to the
"superstitions of the Papacy" to which he tells us that he was
obstinately attached in his boyhood. He soon became more than the pupil
of Budé, Cop, and other Humanists. He was a friend, admitted within the
family circle. He studied Greek with Pierre Danès and Hebrew under
Vatable. In due time (April 1532), when barely twenty-three years of
age, he published at his own expense his first book, a learned
commentary on the two books of Seneca's _De Clementia_.
The book is usually referred to as an example of precocious erudition.
The author shows that he knew as minutely as extensively the whole round
of classical literature accessible to his times. He quotes, and that
aptly, from fifty-five separate Latin authors--from thirty-three
separate works of Cicero, from all the works of Horace and Ovid, from
five comedies of Terence, and from all the works of Virgil. He quotes
from twenty-two separate Greek authors--from five or six of the
principal writings of Aristotle, and from four of the writings of Plato
and of Plutarch. Calvin does not quote Plautus, but his use of the
phrase _remoram facere_ makes it likely that he was well acquainted with
that writer also.[103] The future theologian was also acquainted with
many of the Fathers--with Augustine, Lactantius, Jerome, Synesius, and
Cyprian. Erasmus had published an edition of Seneca, and had advised
scholars to write commentaries, and young Calvin followed the advice of
the Prince of Humanists. Did he imitate him in more? Did Calvin also
disdain to use the New Learning merely to display scholarship, did he
mean to put it to modern uses? Francis I. was busy with one of his
sporadic persecutions of the Huguenots when the book was published, and
learned conjectures have been made whether the two facts had any
designed connection--An exhortation addressed to an emperor to exercise
clemency, and a king engaging in persecuting his subjects. Two things
seem to show that Calvin meant his book to be a protest against the
persecution of the French Protestants. His preface is a daring attack on
the abuses which were connected with the administration of justice in
the public courts, and he says distinctly that he hopes the Commentary
will be of service to the public.[104]
It seems evident from Calvin's correspondence that he had joined the
small band of Protestants in Paris, and that he was intimate with Gerard
Roussel, the Evangelical preacher,[105] the friend of Marguerite of
Navarre, of Lefèvre, of Farel, and a member of the "group of Meaux." The
question occurs, When did his conversion take place? This has been
keenly debated;[106] but the arguments concern words more than facts,
and arise from the various meanings attached to the word "conversion"
rather than from the difficulty of determining the time. Calvin, who
very rarely reveals the secrets of his own soul, tells in his preface to
his _Commentary on the Psalms_, that God drew him from his obstinate
attachment to the superstitions of the Papacy by a "sudden conversion,"
and that this took place after he had devoted himself to the study of
law in obedience to the wishes of his father. It does not appear to have
been such a sudden and complete vision of divine graciousness as Luther
received in the convent at Erfurt. But it was a beginning. He received
then some taste of true piety (_aliquo veræ pietatis gusto_). He was
abashed to find, he goes on to relate, that barely a year afterwards,
those who had a desire to learn what pure doctrine was gradually ranged
themselves around him to learn from him who knew so little (_me novitium
adhuc et tironem_). This was perhaps at Orleans, but it may have been at
Bourges. When he returned to Paris to betake himself to Humanist
studies, he was a Protestant, convinced intellectually as well as drawn
by the pleadings of the heart. He joined the little band who had
gathered round Estienne de la Forge, who met secretly in the house of
that pious merchant, and listened to the addresses of Gerard Roussel. He
was frequently called upon to expound the Scriptures in the little
society; and a tradition, which there is no reason to doubt, declares
that he invariably concluded his discourse with the words, "If God be
for us, who can be against us?"
He was suddenly compelled to flee from Paris. The theologians of the
Sorbonne were vehemently opposed to the "royal lecturers" who
represented the Humanism favoured by Margaret, the sister of Francis,
and Queen of Navarre. In their wrath they had dared to attack Margaret's
famous book, _Miroir de l'âme pécheresse_, and had in consequence
displeased the Court. Nicolas Cop, the friend of Calvin, professor in
the College of Sainte Barbe, was Rector of the University (1533). He
assembled the four faculties, and the faculty of medicine disowned the
proceedings of the theologians. It was the custom for the Rector to
deliver an address before the University yearly during his term of
office, and Cop asked his friend Calvin to compose the oration.[107]
Calvin made use of the occasion to write on "Christian Philosophy,"
taking for his motto, "_Blessed are the poor in spirit_" (Matt. v.
3). The discourse was an eloquent defence of Evangelical truth, in which
the author borrowed from Erasmus and from Luther, besides adding
characteristic ideas of his own. The wrath of the Sorbonne may be
imagined. Two monks were employed to accuse the author of heresy before
_Parlement_, which responded willingly. It called the attention of the
King to papal Bulls against the Lutheran heresy. Meanwhile people
discovered that Calvin was the real author, and he had to flee from
Paris. After wanderings throughout France he found refuge in Basel
(1535).
It was there that he finished his _Christianæ Religionis Institutio_,
which had for its preface the celebrated letter addressed to Francis I.
King of France. The book was the strongest weapon Protestantism had yet
forged against the Papacy, and the letter "a bold proclamation, solemnly
made by a young man of six-and-twenty, who, more or less unconsciously,
assumed the command of Protestantism against its enemies, calumniators,
and persecutors." News had reached Basel that Francis, who was seeking
the alliance of the German Lutheran Princes, and was posing as protector
of the German Protestants, had resolved to purge his kingdom of the
so-called heresy, and was persecuting his Protestant subjects. This
double-dealing gave vigour to Calvin's pen. He says in his preface that
he wrote the book with two distinct purposes. He meant it to prepare and
qualify students of theology for reading the divine Word, that they may
have an easy introduction to it, and be able to proceed in it without
obstruction. He also meant it to be a vindication of the teaching of the
Reformers against the calumnies of their enemies, who had urged the King
of France to persecute them and drive them from France. His dedication
was: _To His Most Gracious Majesty, Francis, King of France and his
sovereign, John Calvin wisheth peace and salvation in Christ._ Among
other things he said:
"I exhibit my confession to you that you may know the nature of
that doctrine which is the object of such unbounded rage to those
madmen who are now disturbing your kingdom with fire and sword. For
I shall not be afraid to acknowledge that this treatise contains a
summary of that very doctrine which, according to their clamours,
deserves to be punished with imprisonment, banishment,
proscription, and flames, and to be exterminated from the face of
the earth."
He meant to state in calm precise fashion what Protestants believed; and
he made the statement in such a way as to challenge comparison between
those beliefs and the teaching of the mediæval Church. He took the
_Apostles' Creed_, the venerable symbol of Western Christendom, and
proceeded to show that when tested by this standard the Protestants were
truer Catholics than the Romanists. He took this _Apostles' Creed_,
which had been recited or sung in the public worship of the Church of
the West from the earliest times, which differed from other creeds in
this, that it owed its authority to no Council, but sprang directly from
the heart of the Church, and he made it the basis of his _Institutio_.
For the _Institutio_ is an expansion and exposition of the _Apostles'
Creed_, and of the four sentences which it explains. Its basis is: _I
believe in God the Father; and in His Son Jesus Christ; and in the Holy
Ghost; and in the Holy Catholic Church._ The _Institutio_ is divided
into four parts, each part expounding one of these fundamental
sentences. The first part describes God, the Creator, or, as the Creed
says: "God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth"; the second,
God the Son, the Redeemer and His Redemption; the third, God the Holy
Ghost and His Means of Grace; the fourth, the Holy Catholic Church, its
nature and marks.
This division and arrangement, based on the _Apostles' Creed_, means
that Calvin did not think he was expounding a new theology or had joined
a new Church. The theology of the Reformation was the old teaching of
the Church of Christ, and the doctrinal beliefs of the Reformers were
those views of truth which were founded on the Word of God, and which
had been known, or at least felt, by pious people all down the
generations from the earliest centuries. He and his fellow Reformers
believed and taug
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