The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment, denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith. Everything was perishing—painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood.

In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin's book, de Clementia, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks—all the signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world, avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and charity.

To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God. These doctors all carried with them the same book—the Bible.

Servetus,[43] a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had published different treatises against the Trinity. He had disputed at Basel with Œcolampadius, some time before this renegade from the Lutheran faith "was strangled by the devil," if we are to believe the account given by Doctor Martin Luther. Servetus boasted that he triumphed over the theologian. Having left Basel in 1532, and crossed the Rhine, he came to hurl a solemn defiance at Calvin; the gauntlet was taken up by the curé of Pont l'Evêque, the place of combat indicated, the day for the tournament named, but at the appointed hour "the heart of this unhappy wretch failed," says Beza, "who having agreed to dispute, did not dare appear." Calvin, on his part—in his refutations of the errors of Servetus, published in 1554—boasts of having in vain offered the Spanish physician remedies suitable to cure his malady. Servetus pretends that his adversary was laying snares for him, which he had the good-fortune to avoid. At a later period he forgot his part, and came to throw himself into the ambuscade of his enemy.

The parliaments redoubled their severity: Calvin was narrowly watched, his liberty might be compromised, and even his life put in peril. He resolved to abandon France, either from fear or spite—if we are to credit an ecclesiastical historian—not being able to forgive Francis I for the preference manifested by this Prince toward a relation of the Constable, "of moderate circumstances," who was promoted to a benefice, for which the author of the Commentary on Seneca had condescended to make solicitation. The testimony of the historian is weighty. Soulier knows neither hatred, passion, nor anger; he seeks after the truth, and he believes that he has found it in the recital which we are about to peruse.

"We, the undersigned—Louis Charreton, counsellor of the King, dean of the presidents of the parliaments of Paris, son of the late Andrew Charreton, who was first Baron of Champagne, and counsellor to the high chamber of the Parliament of Paris; Madam Antoinette Charreton, widow of Noel Renouard, former master in the chamber of the courts of Paris, and daughter of the late Hugh Charreton, Lord of Montauzon; and John Charreton, Sieur de la Terrière; all three cousins, and grandchildren of Hugh Charreton—certify that we have frequently heard from our fathers that the aforesaid Sieur Hugh Charreton had several times told them that under the reign of Francis I, while the court was at Fontainebleau, Calvin, who had a benefice at Noyon, came there and took lodgings in the hotel where the aforesaid Sieur Charreton was lodging, who, understanding that Calvin was a man of letters and of great erudition, and being very fond of the society of learned men, informed him that he would be delighted to have some interviews with him; to this Calvin the more willingly consented under the belief that the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton might be able to assist him in the affair which had brought him to Fontainebleau; that after several interviews the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton demanded from Calvin the object of his journey, to which he answered that he had come to solicit a priory from the King, for which there was but one rival, who was a relative of the Constable.