Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 3
(1520–1523.)
THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX.
The useless magnificence of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, had exhausted the treasury of France, while Charles, without wasting a son, had obtained a practical interview with Henry. The Emperor was sure of, at least, the neutrality of England; he was rich and ready for war. Francis, on the other hand, had to borrow money from the Florentines, and had secured no aid from England. On the contrary, the whole of the north of France was seized by an intermittent panic; in many a bank of clouds men saw an English fleet coming to lay waste and ravage. And this open unprotected, impoverished northern country was left without armies, almost without garrisons. For all the scanty soldiery of France was drawn away to the south, to light in Navarre and to defend imperilled Milan.
War surprised Francis without men or money. The promised Florentine loan was never paid; nothing remained but to tax the suffering country. Tax after tax was levied; unbeneficed priests were rated as laymen. Benefices were bought and sold; still money enough was not collected. Then the King took down the great silver grating, costing six thousand seven hundred marks, which Louis XI. had placed at the tomb of St. Martin. Once this would have been loudly clamoured against as sacrilege, but now men were too miserable to clamour.
Or, if they murmured, if they said strange things and dreamed strange dreams; if starved, afraid, abandoned, they made for their refuge a faith, uncredited and unknown: their dim voices were not heard in the noisy clangour and splendour of sixteenth-century warfare.
For in the towns of Picardy and Normandy, the quiet artisans looked and noticed, then pondered many things in their hearts. The useless glory of the rich, the squalor of the poor, the corruption, simony, and vile immorality of the Church; death near; desertion present; the world bitter, vague, unreal. Over their looms the weavers bent and dreamed; the smiths and armourers hammered strange thoughts into their iron; the very clergy read new meanings in their missals. A great idea had stirred in the silent womb of the quiet, industrial, abandoned North of France; a thought continually born, dead, born again into the world: God is all, the rest is nothing.
"In the year 1520," says the Bourgeois of Paris, "there arose in the duchy of Saxony, in Germany, a heretic doctor of theology, named Martin Luther, who said many things against the power of the Pope . . . and wrote several book, which were printed and published through all the cities of Germany and throughout the kingdom of France . . . and in 1521 there was a great famine, so that in Paris no corn and no bread were to be found in all the town for any price; and throughout the land of Normandy a still greater famine and scarcity of corn and of bread, so that ten bushels of wheat sold for ten livres. . . . And it must be noted that the greater part of the town of Meaux was infected by the doctrines of Luther."
Meaux was a town of weavers, a great industrial centre. Close enough to Paris to share the intellectual activity, the fever of speculation, which signalised Paris from the time of Duns Scotus to the time of Vatable, Meaux was yet aloof, apart; removed from the envies and glories of the court, from the hurry and business of the capital. It was a town of priests and weavers. From the episcopal palace there, a mild elderly bishop swayed the quiet city. This man, Guillaume Briçonnet, a gentle, humane, dreamy scholar, ex-man-of-the-world, garrulous and mystical, had gathered about him the most thoughtful of the French clergy. Under him Meaux remained a serene oasis among the spreading cupidity and corruption of the Church. The pious, the wise, the speculative spirits of France were attracted to that placid neighbourhood; the great Lefebvre d'Étaples, Gérard Roussel, Michel d'Arande, settled there. Then, all at once this humane and idealistic clergy—this starved, fiery, mystical population of weavers and artisans, was seized with a sudden panic: Charles was besieging Mézières. Hunger, desertion, fearful ravage, hovered over all alike. The world was proved an impracticable, an intolerable place of trial. There was nothing to comfort men, saving to build a refuge unseen and secure, a land that no rude soldiery could trample under foot, a haven where all were welcome. The same spirit breathed upon clergy and populace. With interests already divorced from the material world (celibate and scholarly, underfed and sedentary visionaries), they threw themselves, heart and soul, upon the hope of God. In a few months the mysticism of Meaux was an organic and progressive movement. From the bishop to the lowest journeyman weaver, in every class, men spoke the same strange dreamy words, foretold the same necessary purification, turned with the same energy to the new-discovered scriptures, quoted alike the wonderful commentaries of Lefebvre d'Étaples (1512–1522) which began the great Reformation in Europe.
Guillaume Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, a vague and holy nature, was not without the vanity of the mystic. A man of sincere sympathy, sincere emotions, his lack of precision in feeling and thinking condemned him to play an insincere part. He did not inquire of himself whether he really felt, to the same extent of daring and suffering, the intense faith that stirred the awakened clergy, the miserable populace of Meaux. He sympathised with them; he was their bishop. It seemed right to him to stand in the front of their movement, to be their man of God. So we find grouped below this gentle mediocre bishop, with his incomprehensible flow of mystical garrulity, men of ardent and incisive faith like Lefebvre d'Étaples, and Gérard Roussel, Guillaume Farel, Michel d'Arande, all the heroes of the French Reformation. For a long time Briçonnet de Meaux, who called these great men to helter in his diocese, appeared a holier and wiser man than they.
It was to this Man of God that the Duchess Margaret wrote when war and disaster suddenly confronted her with the problems of existence. She knew him, it would seem, only by repute; but in sore distress of soul she sought his aid, as suffering women of old sought the help of a greater Reformer. Margaret's soul had been born in the trouble and sorrow with which she learned that her brother's kingdom was menaced; her brother's life in danger; his safety and honour trusted. (O haunting, unspeakable terror!) to the shallow mediocrity of her own husband. For Charles of Alençon was to lead the vanguard of the war. The brilliant, accomplished, joyous young princess was suddenly made into something more than this. "I must now meddle with many things which may well make me afraid," so she writes to Briçonnet, craving from the unknown the sympathy, the aid, she could not find in the familiar.
How should they guide her now, these Bourbons and Bonnivets, wholly given to the world; these poets and scholars, Marots and Budés, intent on Prosody and Grammar? No; her long studies in theology, her conversations with Madame de Chatillon, had taught her to look for other consolations. And she was sorely in need of help and friendship. This war, which heaped upon her so many fearful doubts and troubles, took from her at the same moment all her support—the brother she adored, the husband she had grown to regard with friendly acquiescence—and, taking her kinsmen and acquaintance, took also the sweet companion of her early womanhood, the tender and spiritual Philiberta of Savoy, her mother's young half-sister. So, looking on the future with miserable eyes, aghast, sick at heart, Margaret wrote to the far-famed Man of Meaux, and begged him to send her, for comfort, his chaplain, the learned Michel d'Arande:—
"Monsieur de Meaux, "June 1521.
"Knowing there is but one thing needful, I have recourse to you, to beseech you, in God's name, to deign by prayer to make yourself the means that He may please to lead M. d'Alençon according to His holy will. For, by the King's command, M. d'Alençon departs as lieutenant-general of the army, which, I misdoubt me, will not return without war. And, since peace and victory are in His hand, and thinking that you wish well, not only to the public good of the kingdom, but also to my husband and to me, I employ you in my affairs, and demand of you spiritual service; for I must needs meddle with many things which well may make me afraid. And again, to-morrow my aunt of Nemours leaves us for Savoy. Wherefore I recommend her and myself to you, and pray you, if you think this a fit season, to let Master Michael depart on a journey hither; it would be a consolation, which I only desire for the glory of God, leaving it to your discretion and to his.
Thus, in this naive, earnest appeal for aid, begins the strange correspondence of Briçonnet and Margaret—a correspondence eight hundred pages long; fantastic, mystical, bewildering, beyond belief. It is difficult to comprehend the consolation which Margaret found in this interchange of metaphors.
"I share my cake with you!" she cries, telling the good bishop of her trouble; and Briçonnet forthwith responds: "Ah! madame, understand that there is in this world a cake of tribulations for you to share with your useless son, made from scattered tares, ground in the mill of sorrow, kneaded with cold water in the trough of infidel and disobedient presumption, baked in the furnace of self-love, of which the eating has been a fig poisoning the architects and their posterity, until the unleavened meal has been put in the cask of human nature." And, again, in answer to some appeal of hers he declares his own unworthiness in still more mystic and astounding fashion: "Who is deserted, is abysmed in the desert; seeking the desert and not finding it; and, finding it, is yet the more bewildered; and a poor guide is he to guide another out of the desert, and to lead another into the desert desired. The desert starves him with mortiferous hunger, although he be full to the eyes; goading his desire but to satisfy it and impoverish it with poverty." Margaret at length is herself in fault. This last message is too hard for her. She beseeches Briçonnet to speak more plainly in a letter which pathetically endeavours to copy his own extraordinary style. "Demetaphorise yourself," she entreats him. "The poor wanderer cannot understand the good which is in the desert, for lack of knowing that she is deserted. Prithee, for kindness' sake, run not so swiftly through the desert that she cannot follow you . . . in order that the abyss invoked by the abyss may whelm in its abysm the poor wanderer Margaret." But Briçonnet cannot refrain from pursuing so fructiferous a metaphor as that which the last sentence of the Duchess offers. He replies at once, without demetaphorising: "The abyss which prevents all abysses, which in saving from the abyss whelms in the abyss without whelming or spoiling [en la desabysmant l'abysmer en l'abysme sans l'abysmer], which abyss is the bottomless bottom of things, the way of the wanderers, without road or path," &c.
In this gallimaufry of absurdities it is difficult to catch the allusion to the mystical love of God, which absorbs all thought, feeling, envy, and leaves the soul absolutely devoid of personal existence, the body quite without desire or sensation. This longed-for death-in-life is the bottomless bottom of things, and we comprehend that a thought so unthinkable could not well be conveyed in precise and reasoned language. We remember that such mystical speculation, couched in clear and logical terms (as in the writings of Master Eckhart) becomes merely Negation, or, at most, Agnosticism. And we are inclined to set aside Briçonnet as a worthy dreamer, not quite sure of that he dreams. But, on a more careful reading, we begin to wonder if this involved and intricate style he not merely a means to set the suspicious off the scent of heresy and treason. "Blow with your breath often upon the fire divine," writes Margaret to him, "set alight the wood that is still green." And he replies: "The true fire which since long has been lodged in your heart, in that of the King and Madame, by grace the greatest and most abundant that I can conceive, I know not if this fire has been covered and slackened, I will not say put out, for God in his goodness has not yet abandoned you. But ask you each in your heart if you have let the fire burn up according to the given grace. I fear you have procrastinated; I fear you have deferred. . . . But I will pray Him to light such a fire in your hearts, to wound them and pierce with such unbearable love, that from you three may issue a flame, burning and setting alight the remainder of your realm."
So we perceive, behind this mask of metaphors, a great and tangible effort: the endeavour to convert the Royal Family of France to the new ideas, to the wish for Reform. Margaret, herself an eager proselyte, throws herself ardently into the scheme. Her frequent letters to Briçonnet are chiefly concerned with this supreme topic. During the siege of Mézières she brings her mother to Meaux, where they spent the winter; and on their departure Margaret does not relax her efforts. "Madame has begun to read in the Holy Scriptures. You know the confidence that she and the King place in you." And Lefebvre writes to rejoice with her in the progress of the good work. "The King and Madame," writes Margaret, "are quite decided to let it be made known that the truth of God is no heresy." Indeed, at that time, when Protestantism as a Church in revolt did not as yet exist, when Lutheranism was the most cultured fashion of the age, it appeared faintly possible that Francis, the Father of Letters, might be brought to favour the opinion professed by the most learned, the most intellectually brilliant scholars of Europe. But Margaret, in this matter, did not understand the temper of Francis and of her mother. Lax and frivolous in regard to the spiritual importance of Catholicism, they believed it, none the less, a necessity of good conduct; that vast hierarchy appeared to them as a temporal force, in which all government and authority was rooted. Louisa and Francis were not of the pious. "I have canonized Francis de Paule—at least I paid the tax!" cries Louisa, and she makes sport of a "Fricassee of Abbeys" which was served up on the death of a certain prelate. Neither she nor her son were in awe of the Church, of their faith, of their Deity even. But they had an immense reverence for the temporal authority of Rome. "Any other religion would prejudice my estate," says Francis; and in this opinion, adds Brantôme, King Soliman perfectly agreed. This quoting of the Grand Turk, the Antichrist himself, as to the importance of the Catholic Church, proves exactly how much and for what reasons the Court of France respected it. Heresy as an opinion was perfectly in accord with the King's liberal taste; but heresy as an agent, as a factor, must be put down with fire and sword. Gradually Briçonnet apprehended this fact; and, being an excessively timid and hesitating nature, he bitterly regretted having gone too far. In sore distress of mind he wrote to Margaret—this Briçonnet who had so sternly admonished her for procrastination—"Let it please you to slacken the fire for some time. The wood you wish to burn is so green that it will put out the fire; and we counsel you (for several reasons, of which I hope to tell you the rest some day) to leave it alone; if you do not wish to quite extinguish both the brand as well as the surplus which desires to burn and to enflame others." But Margaret was too deeply in earnest to hesitate; she never had learned to be afraid. Her sanguine temperament had no doubt of success; and she seemed in a fair way to succeed. Madame had read St. Paul, from curiosity and for amusement; her daughter already made sure of her conversion. "My sister-in-law, my dear sister, is quite of our opinion," she writes to Briçonnet. This may have been Madame de Vendôme (the other grandmother of Henri IV.,) but I am inclined to believe that Margaret found her first convert in the good, stolid, gentle Queen Claude. Such success was followed up, for Margaret did not heed her correspondent's timid expostulations. The misery of the time, the ever-increasing disasters, inclined all minds to religions enthusiasm. Milan was lost as easily as gained; Navarre, conquered in a fortnight, was taken from the King as quickly. Charles was laying siege to Mézières. Henry was expected at Calais; enemies were all round, and hunger in the midst.
Among such conditions the movement spread and grew. In her intrepid faith Margaret conceived the reformation of the entire duchies of Alençon and Berry. But she found difficulties in her path. The secrecy that must needs be kept, the lack of adequate helpers, the denseness of the people, all retarded the work which she considered la salut des âmes, the salvation of souls. She writes to Briçonnet, in September 1522, complaining that Michel d'Arande had had to leave too soon:—"Have pity on the country where he had promised to stay for some time, and which is so deprived of men of his kind that (to subsidise my duty left undone neither through absence or negligence) I had prayed him to succour the poor sheep there. . . . The surety of the porter and some little cowardice of soul prevent me from writing more." A worse trouble soon came, in the declared enmity of the Archbishop of Bourges. Margaret possessed absolute temporal control in the duchy of Berri, given her by Francis in 1517; she administered. justice there even as in Alençon. But she was powerless against the Church. And now the Archbishop of Bourges threatened Michel d'Arande with imprisonment for life, interdicted him the pulpit, and fulminated excommunication against his hearers.
For the Church, at first amused, careless, curious, became alarmed and angry at the extent of this heresy. The Diet of Worms (1521) signalised the importance of Luther; and the orthodox French party, the clericals, the Sorbonne or Faculty of Theology, became aware that they, too, had a nest of Lutherans in their midst. There was talk of burning and of branding. A formal censure of the new ideas was pronounced by the Sorbonne: "One should employ rather flames than arguments against the arrogance of Luther," ran the text. And before the Church of Nôtre Dame de Paris the writings of Luther were burned to ashes, as a warning to his followers. The propositions of Luther were condemned one by one; and none more heartily than that which maintained that the burning of heretics was contrary to the teaching of the Gospel. Lefebvre d'Étaples was threatened with the stake. Then a descent was made upon the town of Meaux, well-known as the head-quarters of the new ideas. Farel, Mazurier, Lefebvre, and many others were obliged to flee for their lives. Others were made prisoners in the dungeons of the Sorbonne. And now a terrible choice was left for the gentle, cultured, timid Briçonnet. His turn would assuredly come next. He trembled, this prophet who had in him something of the mystic's insincerity, and all the sensitive versatility of the dilettante. In face of exile, captivity, torture, the stake, his presence of mind utterly failed him, and the man of God was found, after all, a weak, temporising, amiable ecclesiastic. For the sake of a theory he could not betray his order, sacrifice his liberty, his life. So, on the 15th October 1523 he issued a decree against those who, abusing the gospels, deny purgatory and the saints; on the 13th of December he preached against the "Lutheran pest." He joined himself with the Sorbonne against his former flock; launching out decrees of exile and condemnation like any Magister of Paris. No doubt he argued to himself that where he counselled flight, another would have lit the stake. But his apostasy caused him much hatred, as may be imagined. "This Bishop Briçonnet," says Antoine Froment, "fearing to lose his Bishopric and his life, turned his coat and became a persecutor of those whom formerly he had instructed. . . . Soon after this miserable bishop, haunted by remorse, resigned his see and died of despair: a marvellous example of the horrible judgment of God against those who persecute the truth, having known it." This bitter tone, this acrimonious arrangement of simple facts (for Briçonnet died quietly enough, and maintained to the last his character of the enlightened man of culture), is common to all the Lutheran historians of the time. By the Catholics, also, he was regarded with suspicion and dislike. Already, some months before, Louisa of Savoy wrote in her diary: "By the grace of the Holy Ghost my son and I began to recognise the hypocrites white, black, grey, smoke-coloured, and of every hue, from which God in His infinite clemency has seen fit to preserve us." These hypocrites, we can have no doubt, were her pious neighbours of Meaux; Briçonnet, her correspondent; Lefebvre, who sent her the Epistles of St. Paul; Master Michael, her chaplain: all Lutherans at heart. Louisa never pardoned this attempt upon her faith; and Briçonnet, disdained by the reformers whom he had betrayed, was no less himself an innovator, a suspect, a hypocrite in the eyes of the Catholic party. So strangely fallen was the Man of God.
"My son and I," writes Louisa. She makes no note of Margaret, whose mystical fervour was heightened by persecution. She was now more than ever identified with the party of reform; for their abrupt danger had touched the strongest fibre of her nature, her compassion for the oppressed. Heedless of her own peril, she toiled day and night to rescue and preserve these impoverished fugitives—to obtain a hiding-place for this, a pardon for that, a pension for the other. And she worked to such purpose, she used to such effect her influence with Francis, that from 152l, when the persecution began, until 1525, the year of the captivity, no victim was burned alive at the stakes of the orthodox. Still there were other miseries: flogging, branding, torture, miserable dungeons, from which she could not rescue all suspected. And the spectacle of so much pain and such injustice wounded her gentle heart; and did not rankle there. Strange tenderness for the oppressed, that showed no reverse of hatred for the oppressor; constancy in well-doing, that knew no disdain for the weaker and more fickle. This exquisite humanity, this perfume of charity, is the very breath of Margaret's soul. While rescuing Roussel and Lefebvre, sheltering the poor shepherdless flock of Meaux, she felt no bitterness towards their betrayer. She did not resent the failure of this timid pastor to whom she had entrusted her soul and so many others. He having flagged and fallen away, she quietly stepped into his vacant place and took upon her slender shoulders the burden he had dropped. From this moment Margaret, not Briçonnet, is the centre of the movement of Meaux.
No censure escaped her lips; she did not even interrupt her correspondence with the Bishop, and maintained it always on the same tone of reverence and appeal. Perhaps it was not all charity. At least, I think, a factor in that long-suffering charity of hers was a certain chivalrous denseness, a certain obstinacy in clinging to an ideal, which made her patiently accept the faulty Briçonnet as her spiritual superior, even as she accepted Francis as her perfect hero, despite the many foibles, the long debasement, the patent degradation, which would have disenchanted any other worshipper. The pedestal on which this idealising woman set her idols was so high that she did not see their feet of clay. And, bowed down before her shrines, she offered a life-long unparalleled devotion to those whose real qualities she never even saw.