Cardinal of Lorraine

“ Who are these evil-minded men, Monsieur le Cardinal?"
"Why, who should they be," rejoined Charles de Lorraine, "if not these cursed Huguenot heretics?"
"Heretics again!" cried the king. "Are you sure, Monsieur, that you are not allowing yourself to be led astray by suspicions which have no foundation in fact?" ”

“ He had been supported in all his undertakings and intrigues by his brother John, cardinal of Lorraine (1498-1550) , who had been made coadjutor of Metz at the age of three. The cardinal was archbishop of Reims, Lyons and Narbonne, bishop of Metz, Toul, Verdun, Thérouanne, Luçon, Albi, Valence, Nantes and Agen, and before he died had squandered most of the wealth which he had derived from these and other benefices. ”

“ Although the duke of Guise is popular, above all with the nobility, yet everybody so detests the cardinal of Lorraine that if the matter depended upon universal suffrage, not only could he have no part in the government, but perhaps not in the world! ”

“ His brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who was as ambitious and almost as able as he, had the chief direction in civil, financial, and diplomatic affairs; never, since the great mayors-of-the-palace under the Merovingian kings, had similar power been in the hands of a subject. Like a man born to command, Guise saw that, in so complicated a situation, a brilliant stroke must be accomplished and a great peril be met by a great success. ”

“ National feeling now ran very high, and a dispute as to precedence between the French and Spanish ambassadors nearly brought the Council to an end. The state of tension is well illustrated by the interjection of a member of the Curialist party after a French prelate had denounced the abuses of the Roman Court; "a scabie Hispana incidimus in morbum GaHicum."
Meanwhile efforts were being made to draw the Cardinal of Lorraine over to the papal party. A man of little sincerity, able and ambitious, he considered his own interests alone. ”

“ With the exception of the Cardinal of Lorraine, they were well-nigh unanimous in reprobating a venture from which they apprehended only disaster. Perhaps even Lorraine now repented his presumption, and felt less assured of his dialectic skill since he had tried the mettle of his Genevese antagonist. Rarely has battle been forced upon an army after a greater number of fruitless attempts to avoid it than those made by the French ecclesiastics, backed by the alternate solicitations [Pg 512] and menaces of Pius the Fourth, and Philip of Spain. ”

“ Together with his brother, Duke Francis, the cardinal of Lorraine was all-powerful during the reigns of Henry II. and Francis II.; in 1558 and 1559 he was one of the negotiators of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis; he fought and pitilessly persecuted the reformers, and by his intolerant policy helped to provoke the crisis of the wars of religion. ”

“ I have seen many a young abbe, as they call themselves, clerk only in name, loitering at court, free to throw off the cassock any moment they chose, and as insolent as the rest. Why, the Abbe de Lorraine, cardinal that is now, said of my complexion—-’
‘No vows, quotha!’ muttered Sir Marmaduke, well aware of the Cardinal de Lorraine’s opinion of his lady’s complexion. ‘So much the better; he is too good a young fellow to be forced to mope single, and yet I hate men’s breaking their word.’
‘And that’s all you have to say!’ angrily cried her ladyship. ”

“ I may instance, as a case in point, the mighty Cardinal of Lorraine, who, despite all his puissance, was often the butt of the lively ladies of the Court of Catherine de Medicis and her royal sons. Brantôme says of this gay and intellectual priest, that, when things went well with him, his arrogance was insufferable; but that no one could be more courteous, or more humble, when his projects met with obstruction.64 One of the Queen’s maids-of-honour, Mdlle. de la Guyonnière, afterwards Madame de Ligneroles, often carried on a fool’s war with the redoubted Cardinal. ”

“ But natural deaths were rare in the house of Guise; and in the sixteenth century poison had no unimportant share in the bills of mortality. Some indeed have hinted its possible agency in the death of John, Cardinal of Lorraine, which occurred within forty days of that of his brother Claude. This prelate was on his way back from Rome, where he had been an unsuccessful aspirant to the papal tiara, when he was suddenly informed, on his passage through Lyons, of the Duke's decease. ”

“ Meanwhile Marshal Montmorency, sent by Catharine to dissuade the prince, the admiral, and Cardinal Châtillon from prosecuting their enterprise, had returned with the message that "the Huguenots were determined to defeat the preparations made to destroy them and their religion, which was only tolerated by a conditional edict, revocable by the king at his pleasure." [439]
Cardinal Lorraine invites Alva to invade France.
The Cardinal of Lorraine did not share in the flight of the court to Paris. Never able to boast of the possession of overmuch courage, he may have feared for his personal safety ”

“ In the presence of the king of Navarre, the constable, the dukes of Guise, Nevers, Montpensier, and Aumale, and of spiritual lords, the cardinal of Lorraine, who was archbishop of Rheims, and the bishops of Laon, Langres, Châlons, Noyon, and Beauvais, the last being the cardinal Châtillon, the only prominent Huguenot, who attended the coronation. ”

“ My Lord Cardinal of Lorraine, tell me, How likes your grace my son's pleasantness? His mind, you see, runs on his minions, And all his heaven is to delight himself; And, whilst he sleeps securely thus in ease, Thy brother Guise and we may now provide To plant ourselves with such authority50 As not a man may live without our leaves. Then shall the Catholic faith of Rome Flourish in France, and none deny the same.
Card. Madam, as in secrecy I was told, My brother Guise hath gather'd a power of men, Which are, [400] he saith, to kill the Puritans; But 'tis the house of Bourbon that he means. ”

“ Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Guise (born at the castle of Bar, February 17, 1519) , was thirty-one; his brother, Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, was only six-and-twenty (he was born at Joinville, February 17, 1524) ; Francis de Scepeaux (born at Durdtal, Anjou, in 1510) , who afterwards became Marshal de Vieilleville, was at this time nearly forty; but he had contributed in 1541 to the victory of Ceresole, and Francis I. had made so much of it that he had said, on presenting him to his son Henry, “He is no older than you, and see what he has done already ”

“ This is the first call to arms on behalf of our religion in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they have conquered. The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not the kingdom. The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly what the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking. Under pretext of defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine means to claim the crown of France as its patrimony. Relying on the Church, it has made the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its support, its acolytes, its spies. ”

“ Tournon, Lorraine, and Châtillon, each in full cardinal's robes, faced their brethren of the Papal Consistory, Armagnac, Bourbon, and Guise, while a long row of archbishops and bishops filled out the line on either side. Altogether, forty or fifty prelates, with numerous attendant theologians and members of the superior clergy, regular and secular, had been marshalled to oppose the little band of reformers. ”

“ The Catholics of Dijon demanded that in future Calvinist ministers be forbidden to attend the last hours of the dying, a petition which the cardinal of Lorraine supported in order to make the chancellor L’Hôpital commit himself. ”

“ Had Achon of Arles lived, it is [Pg 70] not too much to say that the history of France would have been altered, and the eagle of Lorraine grasped the sceptre of my country. He possessed every quality that the Cardinal and his brother lacked. He equalled the Constable in courage and the Italian in duplicity and cunning. In a word, he was a great, bad man, such as a nation sometimes produces to its sorrow and often to its destruction. ”

“ Even the Protestants, whom he so deeply injured, would for the most part have acquiesced in the opinion of the cabinet minister, De l'Aubespine, that the Duke of Guise was a captain capable of rendering good service to his native land, had he not been hindered and infected by his brother's ambition. It is the same trustworthy authority who states that the duke was more than once induced to exclaim of his brother Charles: "That man in the end will ruin us." [544]
Various estimates of the second Cardinal of Lorraine. ”

“ He was known as the “game-bag Cardinal.” On one occasion, when giving largesse to a blind mendicant in Rome, the latter was so astonished at the amount of the gift, that, pointing to the giver, he exclaimed, “If thou art not Jesus Christ, thou art John of Lorraine.”
He was bold in his gallantry. When sent by Francis I. to negotiate some political business with the pope, he passed through Piedmont, where he was for a while the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy. The duchess, on the cardinal being presented, gravely offered her hand (she was a Portuguese princess) to be kissed. ”

“ The petty princes placed too near a great potentate are just like the shrubs that grow beside an old oak tree, whose broad shade blights them, while its roots undermine and sap them, till at last they are weakened and destroyed.
When young Gaston, son of Henri IV., seeking to get free from Richelieu's insolent despotism, withdrew to the Duc de Lorraine, the Cardinal uttered a cry of joy, and remarked to Louis XIII., that vindictive, jealous prince, "Oh, what a good turn the Duc d'Orleans has just done you to-day! By going to stay with M. de Lorraine, he will oust him!" ”

“ The assertion of this claim roused Cardinal Granvelle to the highest indignation. "So dangerous a thing," he wrote to [Pg 502] Philip, "cannot possibly be allowed." But, as he confessed, what made the situation awkward was that Madame de Lorraine's claims were strongly supported, not only by her son, Duke Charles, but by the Emperor Rudolf, the Duke of Bavaria, the Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles, and all the Princes of the Empire. ”

“ The pope also granted a jubilee to all Christendom, and one reason assigned was, that they should thank God for the slaughter of the enemies of the church, lately executed in France. Two days later, the cardinal of Lorraine headed another great procession of cardinals, clergy, and ambassadors, to the chapel of St. ”

“ On this, Mary of Lorraine, who had come to the council, gave him a glance of sorrowful reproach.
"My lords," said she, with a flush on her usually pale cheek, "when my dear husband was dying in Falkland Palace, as Monseigneur le Cardinal Beaton (who is now in heaven) told me, the setting sun shed a stream of light into the room where he lay, and with brilliance lit up the royal arms above the mantelpiece, the arms of Scotland, or, the lion gules within a double tressure, all were brightened as with a transient glory ”

“ And--in return for this indulgence--Monsieur was simply required to abandon his brother-in-law Charles de Lorraine to the vengeance of the King, without attempting any interference in his behalf; to detach himself wholly and unreservedly from all his late friends and adherents both within and without the kingdom of France; to resign all alliance either personal or political with the Queen-mother; to be guided in every circumstance by the counsels of the Cardinal-Minister ”

“ Under the latter two, Duke and Cardinal, was played out the second act of the great political drama of Lorraine. It was altogether a melo-drama, in which there was abundance of light and shadow. At times, we find the hero exhibiting exemplary candor; anon, he is the dark plotter, or the fierce and open slayer of his kind. There are stirring scenes of fights, wherein his adversaries draw their swords against him, at the instigation of a disgusted King, who no sooner saw Guise triumphant, than he devoted to death the survivors whom he had clandestinely urged into the fray. ”

“ These divisions produced between the two chambers a diversity of jurisprudence, the great chamber continuing to pursue the heretics with severity, and the Tournelle seeking means to acquit them.
These symptoms of indulgence alarmed the clergy. “If the secular arm fails in its duty,” said the Cardinal de Lorraine to the king, “all the malcontents will throw themselves into this detestable sect; they will destroy the ecclesiastical power, and afterwards it will be the turn of the regal power.” ”

“ Things were at this juncture when our young King assumed the management of affairs. The policy pursued by Louis XIII. and his Cardinal seemed to him an advantageous one, also; he lured to his capital M. de Lorraine, who was still young and a widower, and by every conceivable pretext he was prevented from marrying again. Lorraine had a nephew,— [Prince Charles.] —a young man of great promise, to whom the uncle there and then offered to make over all his property and rights, if the King would honour him with his protection and marry him to whomsoever he fancied. ”