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 a.s.sisted the inhabitants to drive the Bishop away, and to become a free munic.i.p.ality 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 G.o.d; but they continually went where the Bernese had no power to a.s.sist 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 hara.s.s 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 Ma.s.s beside them. As the priest elevated the Host, Froment seized it and, turning towards the people, said, "This is not the G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing a solitary place, they were a.s.sailed 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 G.o.d 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 Neuchatel.[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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sailed 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, Neuchatel, 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 Stra.s.sburg 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 a.s.sistant, 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 Gren.o.ble, about 1510. He was therefore, like Farel, a native of Dauphine. Like him, also, he had gone to Paris for his education, and had become acquainted with Lefevre, who seems to have introduced him to Marguerite d"Angouleme, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt (_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 Ma.s.s, 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 Guerin Muete, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.e.x, relates that "les femmes comme enragees sortirent apres, de grande furie, luy jettant force pierres."[77] He escaped from them. But Alexandre Ca.n.u.s 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 G.o.d, 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 emba.s.sy to Geneva to vindicate publicly the honour of G.o.d 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 emba.s.sy 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 doc.u.ment), 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 a.s.sembled 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ma.s.sacre 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 a.s.sertions 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 part.i.tion 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 emba.s.sies to a.s.sist 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 _Theses evangeliques_ 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 Gren.o.ble, 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 G.o.ds 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 Ma.s.s provisionally, to summon the monks before the Council, and to ask them to give their reasons for maintaining the Ma.s.s 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 a.s.sist 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 Ma.s.s, 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 Ma.s.s 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 Ma.s.s 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, Neuchatel, 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 munic.i.p.alities 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 Ma.s.s and saint worship was officially confirmed by the citizens a.s.sembled, "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 Dauphine, whose courage, amounting to reckless daring, won for him the pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.ble--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._