run, would inevitably conduce to the progress of civil freedom. It is certain that the distinction between Church and State, which was recognized from the conversion of Constantine, notwithstanding the long ages of intolerance and persecution that were to follow, was the first step, the necessary condition, in the development of religious liberty. First, it must be settled that the State shall not stretch its power over the Church, within its proper sphere; next, that the State shall not lend its power to the Church, as an executioner of ecclesiastical laws.

A second reason why Calvinism has been favorable to civil liberty, is found in the republican character of its church organization. Laymen shared power with ministers. The people, the body of the congregation, took an active and responsible part in the choice of the clergy, and of all other officers. At Geneva, the alliance of the Church with the civil authority, and the circumstances in which Calvin was placed, reduced to a considerable extent the real power of the people in church affairs. Calvin did not realize his own theory. But elsewhere, especially in countries where Calvinism had to encounter the hostility of the State, the democratic tendencies of the system had full room for development. Men who were accustomed to rule themselves in the Church, would claim the same privilege in the commonweath.

Another source of the influence of Calvinism, in advancing the cause of civil liberty, has been derived from its theology. The sense of the exaltation of the Almighty Ruler, and of his intimate connection with the minutest incidents and obligations of human life, which is fostered by this theology, dwarfs all earthly potentates. An intense spirituality, a consciousness that this life is but an infinitesimal fraction of human existence, dissipates the feeling of personal homage for men, however high their station, and dulls the lustre of all earthly grandeur.

CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY.

241

Calvinism and Romanism are the antipodes of each other. Yet, it is curious to observe that the effect of these opposite systems upon the attitude of men towards the civil authority, has often been not dissimilar. But the Calvinist, unlike the Romanist, dispenses with a human priesthood, which has not only often proved a powerful direct auxiliary to temporal rulers, but has educated the sentiments to a habit of subjection, which renders submission to such rulers more facile, and less easy to shake off.

16

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.

THE long contest for Gallican rights had lowered the prestige of the popes in France, but it had not weakened the Catholic Church, which was older than the monarchy itself, and, in the feeling of the people, was indissolubly associated with it. The College of the Sorbonne, or the Theological Faculty at Paris, and the Parliament, which had together maintained Gallican liberty, were united in stern hostility to all doctrinal innovations. The Concordat concluded between Francis I. and Leo X., after the battle of Marignano, gave to the King the right of presentation to vacant benefices; to the Pope, the first-fruits. It excited profound discontent, and was only registered by Parliament after prolonged resistance and under a protest. It abolished the Pragmatic Sanction, which had been deemed the charter of Gallican independence; but it weakened the Catholic Church, only as it led to the introduction of incompetent, unworthy persons, favorites of the court, into ecclesiastical offices, and thus increased the necessity for reform.2 In Southern France a remnant of the Waldenses had survived, and the recollection of the Catharists was still preserved in popular songs and legends. But the first movements towards reform emanated from the Humanist culture.

A literary and scientific spirit was awakened in France

1 Ranke, Französische Geschichte vornehmlich im 16. u. 17. Jahrhundert, i. 110. 2 On the corruption consequent upon the Concordat, see Ranke, Französische Geschichte, i. 131.

through the lively intercourse with Italy, which subsisted under Louis XII. and Francis I. By Francis especially, Italian scholars and artists were induced in large numbers to take up their abode in France. Frenchmen likewise visited Italy and brought home the classical culture which they acquired there. Among the scholars who cultivated Greek was Budæus, the foremost of them, whom Erasmus styled the "wonder of France." After the "Peace of the Dames" was concluded at Cambray, in 1529, when Francis surrendered Italy to Charles V., a throng of patriotic Italians who feared or hated the Spanish rule, streamed over the Alps and gave a new impulse to literature and art. Poets, artists, and scholars found in the king a liberal and enthusiastic patron. The new studies, especially Hebrew and Greek, were opposed by all the might of the Sorbonne, the leader of which was the Syndic, Beda. He and his associates were on the watch for heresy, and every author who was suspected of overstepping the bounds of orthodoxy, was immediately accused and subjected to persecution. Thus two parties were formed, the one favorable to the new learning, and the other inimical to it and rigidly wedded to the traditional theology.1

The Father of the French Reformation, or the one more entitled to this distinction than any other, is Jacques Lefèvre, who was born at Étaples, a little village of Picardy, about the year 1455, prosecuted his studies at the University of Paris, and having become a master of arts and a priest, spent some time in Italy. After his return he taught mathematics and philosophy at Paris, was active in publishing and commenting on the works of Aristotle, which he had studied in the original in Italy, as well as in printing books of ancient mathematicians, writings of the Fathers, and mystical productions

1 Weber, Geschichtliche Darstellung d. Calvinismus im Verhältniss zum Staat, p. 33 seq.

of the Middle Ages. Lefèvre was honored among the Humanists as the restorer of philosophy and science in the University. Deeply imbued with a religious spirit, in 1509 he put forth a commentary on the Psalms, and in 1512 a commentary on the Epistles of Paul. As early as about 1512, he said to his pupil Farel: "God will renovate the world, and you will be a witness of it;" and in the last named work, he says that the signs of the times betoken that a renovation of the Church is near at hand. He teaches the doctrine of gratuitous justification, and deals with the Scriptures as the supreme and sufficient authority. But a mystical, rather than a polemical vein characterizes him; and while this prevented him from breaking with the Church, it also blunted the sharpness of the opposition which his opinions were adapted to produce. One of his pupils was Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who held the same view of justification with Lefèvre, and fostered the evangelical doctrine in his diocese. The enmity of the Sorbonne to Lefèvre and his school took a more aggressive form when the writings of Luther began to be read in the University and elsewhere. The theologians of the Sorbonne set their faces against every deviation from the dogmatic system of Aquinas. Reuchlin, having been a student at Paris, had hoped for support there in his conflict with the Dominicans of Cologne; but the Paris faculty declared against him. In 1521 they sat in judgment on Luther and condemned him as a hertic and blasphemer.1 Heresy was treated by them as an offense against the State; and the Parliament, the highest judicial tribunal, showed itself prompt to carry out their decrees by the infliction of the usual penalties. The Sorbonne formally condemned a dissertation of Lefèvre on a point of the evangelical history, in which he had controverted the traditional opinion. He, with Farel, Gérard Roussel, and other preachers, found an asylum with 1 Melancthon replied. Seckendorf, i. 185.