Arthur Augustus Tilley

“ The great majority preferred exile to abjuration. Thus while the cause of Protestantism in France lost in this way many of its most ardent supporters, on the other hand there fell away from it the timid and the interested, those who had no wish "to be burned like red herrings," and those who basked in the sunshine of the royal favour. Moreover the sympathies of moderate men, of men like Guillaume and Jean du Bellay, of Guillaume Budé and François Rabelais, were alienated by the iconoclastic outbursts of the Reformers. ”

“ In 1597 he left Geneva for the last time. After visiting Montpellier, where Casaubon was now professor, he made for Paris, but was seized with sudden illness at Lyons, and died there in his seventieth year, at the end of January 1598.
Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly. For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as printer, editor, or original writer, was enormous. The productions of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his father’s books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink, inferior to them in general beauty. ”

“ He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though by the latter half of the 16th century nearly all the important Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published, his untiring activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his press. The most important have been already mentioned. Henri’s reputation as a scholar and editor has increased of late years. His familiarity with the Greek language has always been admitted to have been quite exceptional ”

“ It was inevitable also that the spirit of individualism which was another marked characteristic of the Renaissance should end in questioning the right of the Church to be the sole interpreter of that book, and in asserting boldly that the final test of all religion is its power to satisfy the needs of the individual soul. ”

“ The Reformation in France never developed into a national movement. Though the Protestants under the stress of persecution consolidated themselves into a powerful and well-organised party, they never formed more than a minority of the nation. The majority, whose attachment to the Catholic Church was stronger than their desire for her reformation, detested the Reformers as schismatics and separatists even more than as heretics. When the Protestant ranks were recruited by the accession of numerous political malcontents, a more worldly leaven pervaded the whole cause ”

“ Charles Estinne (1504 or 1505–1564) , the third son of Henri, was, like his brother Robert, a man of considerable learning. After the usual humanistic training lie studied medicine, aud became a doctor of that faculty in the university of Paris. In 1540 he accompanied the French ambassador Lazare Baif to Italy in the capacity of tutor to his natural son Antoine, the future poet. In 1551, when Robert Estienne left Paris for Geneva, Charles, who had remained a Catholic, took charge of his printing establishment, and in the same year was appointed king’s printer. ”

“ Special censure has been passed on his Plutarch, in which he is said to have introduced conjectures of his own into the text, while pretending to have derived them from MS. authority. But a late editor, Sintenis, has shown that, though like all the other editors of his day he did not give references to his authorities, every one of his supposed conjectures can be traced to some MS. Whatever may be said as to his taste or his judgment, it seems that he was both careful and scrupulous, and that he only resorted to conjecture when authority failed him. ”

“ Though the Cardinal was a liberal patron of learning and letters, he was a relentless and untiring foe to the new religious doctrines. "He is worth to France an Inquisition in himself," said a contemporary. It is significant also that just at this time Francis lost one of his ablest and most enlightened ministers, and the French Reformers one of their best friends in Guillaume du Bellay, who died in January, 1543.
With such a man in power as the Cardinal de Tournon there was not likely to be any slackness in the execution of the Edicts. ”

“ While Bude wrote French with difficulty and considered it hardly a fit language for a scholar to use, Henri Estienne was loud in its praises and gave practical proof of its capabilities. Of his French writings three were devoted to this theme : (1) Conformité du Langage François avec le Grec (published in 1575, but without date; ed. L. Feugere, 1850) , in which French is shown to have, among modern languages, the most affinity with Greek, the first of all languages ”

“ An active element of discontent was furnished by the younger sons of the nobility, whose only trade was war, and who were pressing in vain for their arrears of pay. To the Protestants the Cardinal's rule was a natural source of apprehension. He was known to be a thoroughgoing opponent of heresy and an advocate of the severest measures of repression. At first the Reformers had hopes in Catharine, but these were soon disappointed. She had no power apart from the Cardinal. Severe persecutions were set on foot, and Paris began to have the air of a captured city. ”

“ In 1559 he printed a Latin translation from his own pen of Sextus Empiricus, and an edition of Diodorus Siculus with the new books. In 1566 he published his best known French work, the Apologie pour Hérodote, or, as he himself called it, L’Introduction au Traité de la Conformité des Merveilles Anciennes avec les Modernes ou Traité preparatif à l’Apologie pour Hérodote. Some passages in the original edition being considered objectionable by the Geneva consistory, he was compelled to cancel the pages containing them. The book became highly popular. ”

“ Religious meetings were held by night or in cellars; doctrines were spread by secret house-to-house teaching, or by treatises concealed amongst the wares of pretended pedlars. On the other hand the frequent executions helped to spread the evil they were meant to repress. The firm courage with which the victims faced death did as much as the purity of their lives to convert others to their faith. Moreover, the influence of the exiles reacted on their old homes. From Geneva and the other Swiss centres of Protestantism missionaries came to evangelise France. ”

“ During the whole of Lent, 1533, Gérard Roussel, at the instigation of Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, and of her husband, preached daily in the Louvre to large congregations; and when Noel Beda and some other doctors of the Sorbonne ventured to accuse the King and Queen of heresy, and to stir up the people to sedition, Francis, on the matter being reported to him, issued from Melun an edict banishing the doctors from the city. ”

“ In 1528 he married Perrette, a daughter of the scholar and printer Josse Bade (Jodocus Badius) , and in the same year he published his first Latin Bible, an edition in folio, upon which he had been at work for the last four years. In 1532 appeared his Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ, a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, upon which for two years he had toiled incessantly, with no other assistance than that of Thierry of Beauvais. A second edition, greatly enlarged and improved, appeared in 1536, and a third, still further improved, in 3 vols. ”

“ As the result of success the Protestants became insolent and defiant. At Agen and Montauban they seized unused Catholic places of worship. In many towns the mob rose against them and the disturbances ended in bloodshed. At Beauvais, where the Cardinal de Châtillon was Bishop, there was a dangerous riot on Easter Monday, in consequence of which an Edict was issued on April 19 forbidding all provocation to disturbance. It remained a dead letter. At the end of the month a Paris mob having attacked the house of a Protestant nobleman was fired on by the defenders. ”

“ His principal works are Praedium Rusticum (1554) , a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favourite book down to the end of the 17th century ”

“ All acts and words tending to faction or disturbance were forbidden. Attendance at any assembly at which worship was celebrated otherwise than according to the forms of the Catholic Church was to be punished by imprisonment and confiscation of property. The cognisance of cases of simple heresy was left to the ecclesiastical Courts. If the accused was handed over to the secular arm no penalty higher than banishment could be imposed. Finally it was stated that the Edict was only provisional, pending the decision of either a General or a National Council. ”

“ In 1547 he went to Italy, where he spent three years in hunting for and collating MSS. and in intercourse with learned men. In 1550 he visited England, where he was favourably received by Edward VI., and then Flanders, where he learnt Spanish. In 1551 he joined his father at Geneva, which henceforth became his home. In 1554 he gave to the world, as the first fruits of his researches, two first editions, viz. ”

“ Put together without any method, its extreme desultoriness makes it difficult to read continuously, but the numerous stories, collected partly from various literary sources, notably from the preachers Menot and Maillard, partly from the writer’s own multifarious experience, with which it is packed, make it an interesting commentary on the manners and fashions of the time. ”

“ About the same time Antoine de Bourbon, the titular King of Navarre, who was the next in succession to King Henry II and his sons, joined the ranks of the Reformers. He was followed by his brother Louis, Prince of Condé.
The most active of these converts was d'Andelot. In April, 1558, he visited his wife's large estates in Britanny together with one of the Paris pastors, Gaspard Carmel, and thus helped to spread Protestantism in that remote and conservative province. But soon after his return to Paris he was arrested by the King's order, and confined at Melun for two months. ”

“ Both the nobles and the Third Estate insisted strongly on the need for a reformation of the Church. As regards Protestantism the Third Estate pressed for complete toleration, while the clergy demanded vigorous measures of repression. The nobles, being divided in their opinions, presented three cahiers representing three groups of provinces. One group, consisting of the central provinces, were in favour of rigid repression; another, formed by the western provinces and the towns of Rouen and Toulouse, demanded toleration ”

“ Italians shared largely in the royal patronage, and in 1560 it was estimated that they held one-third of all the benefices in the kingdom. It was this new method of patronage which more than anything paralysed all attempts at reform. It was idle to talk of reform at the bottom when at the top every personal interest was bound up with the existing corruption. ”

“ Within a week fifty Lutherans were in prison; and an edict was issued that anyone convicted by two witnesses of being a Lutheran should be burned forthwith, "It will be like the Spanish Inquisition" wrote Martin Bucer,
But the King's Catholic fever quickly cooled down. On January 24, 1534, he entered into a secret treaty with the German Protestant Princes; and when he returned to Paris in the first week of February the persecutions ceased. Evangelical doctrines were again preached in the Louvre. "I see no one round me but old women," was the complaint of a Sorbonne doctor from his pulpit ”

“ On March 17 Francis returned from captivity; and on the very day of his arrival in France he sent an order for the Parliament to suspend all action against Berquin, who after considerable delay was set at liberty. Lefèvre, Roussel, and Arande, who still called themselves members of the Catholic Church, were recalled from exile, and Lefèvre was appointed tutor to the King's third son. In spite of the execution of Jacques Pauvan, one of the Meaux preachers against whom proceedings had been taken with the full approval of the King (August 28, 1526) , the hopes of the Reformers began to rise ”