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History of the Reformation Vol. 7 THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY HISTORY HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN THE TIME OF CALVIN VOL. 7 by J.H. Merle d’Aubigne B o o k s F o r Th e A g e s AGES Software • Albany, OR USA Version 1.0 © 1998 2 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE IN THE TIME OF CALVIN. BY J. H. MERLE D’AUBIGNE, D.D., AUTHOR OF the ‘HISTORY OF the REFORMATION OF the SIXTEENTH CENTURY,’ ETC. Les choses de petite duree ont coutume de devenir fanees, quand elles ont passe leur temps. ‘Au regne de Christ, il n’y a que le nouvel homme qui soit florissant, qui ait de la vigueur, et dont il faille faire cas.’ CALVIN. VOL. 7 GENEVA. DENMARK, SWEDEN, NORWAY. HUNGARY, POLAND, BOHEMIA. THE NETHERLANDS. 3 EDITOR’S PREFACE. A WHOLE year has elapsed since the publication of the sixth volume of the History of the Reformation. But this delay is owing to the fact that the editor has been unable to devote to this under-taking more than the scanty leisure hours of an active ministry; and not, as some have supposed, to the necessity of compiling the History from notes more or less imperfect left by the author. The following narrative, like that which has preceded it, is wholly written by M. Merle d’Aubigne himself. The editor repeats the statement made on the publication of the last volume—that his task has consisted solely in verifying the numerous quotations occurring in the text or as foot-notes, and in curtailing, in two or three places, some general reflections which interfered with the rapid flow of the narrative, and which the author would certainly have either suppressed or condensed if it had been permitted him to put the finishing touches to his work. We can only express our gratitude to the public for the reception given to the posthumous volume which we have already presented to them. Criticism, of course, has everywhere accompanied praise. The estimates formed by the author of this or that character have not been accepted by all readers; and the journals have been the organs of the public sentiment. One important English review f1 has censured the author for placing himself too much at the evangelical point of view. It is unquestionable that this is indeed the point of view at which M. Merle d’Aubigne stood. This was not optional with him; he could not do otherwise. By conviction, by feeling, by nature, by his whole being, he was evangelical. But was this the point of view best adapted to afford, him a real comprehension of the epoch, the history of which he intended to relate? This is the true question, and the answer seems obvious. If we consider the fact that the theologians of the revival at Geneva have been especially accused of having been too much in bondage to the theology of the sixteenth century, we shall acknowledge that this evangelical point of view was the most favorable to all accurate understanding of the movement of the Reformation, and to a just expression of its ideas and tendencies. No one 4 could better render to us the aspect of the sixteenth century than one of those men who, if we may so speak, have restored it in the nineteenth. The criticism most commonly applied to M. Merle d’Aubigne is that he has displayed a bias in favor of the men of the Reformation; and especially in favor of Calvin. That the author of the History of the Reformation feels for Calvin a certain tenderness, and that he is inclined to excuse, to a certain extent, his errors and even his faults, may be admitted. But it is no less indisputable that this tendency has never led him to palliate or to conceal those errors or faults. He pronounces a judgment; and this is sometimes a justification or an excuse. But he has in the first place narrated; and this narration has been perfectly accurate. The kindly feeling, or, as some say, the partiality of the writer may have deprived his estimate of the severity which others would have thought needful; but it has not falsified his view. His glance has remained keen and clear, and historical truth comes forth from the author’s narratives with complete impartiality. These narratives themselves furnish the reader with the means of arriving at a different conclusion from that which the author has himself drawn. May we not add that M. Merle d’Aubigne’s love for his hero, admitting the indisputable sincerity of the historian, far from being a ground of suspicion, imparts a special value to his judgments? For nearly sixty years M. Merle lived in close intimacy with Calvin. He carefully investigated his least writings, seized upon and assimilated all his thoughts, and entered, as it were, into personal intercourse with the great reformer. Calvin committed some faults. Who disputes this? But he did not commit these faults with deliberate intention. He must have yielded to motives which he thought good, and, were it only in the blindness of passion, must have justified his actions to his own conscience. In the main, it is this self- justification on Calvin’s part which M. Merle d’Aubigne has succeeded better than anyone else in making known to us. He has depicted for us a living Calvin; he has revealed to us his inmost thought; and when, in the work which I am editing, I meet with an approving judgment in which I cannot join without some reservation, I imagine nevertheless that if Calvin, rising from the tomb, could himself give me his reasons, he would give me no others than those which I find set forth in these pages. If this view is correct, and it seems to me difficult to doubt it, has not the author solved 5 one of the hardest problems of history—to present the true physiognomy of characters, and to show them as they were; under the outward aspect of facts to discover and depict the minds of men? Moreover, the greater number of these general criticisms are matters of taste, of tendency, of views and of temperament. There are others which would be important if they were well-founded. Such are those which bear upon the accuracy of the work, almost upon the veracity of the author. Fortunately it is easy to overthrow them by a rapid examination. ‘M. Merle,’ it has been said, f2 ‘makes use of his vast knowledge of the works of the reformers to borrow from them passages which he arbitrarily introduces out of their place and apart from the circumstances to which they relate. Thus sentences taken from works of Calvin written during the last periods of his life are transformed into sentences pronounced by him twenty or twenty- five years earlier. That which on one occasion was written with his pen, is in regard to another occasion, put into his lips. We may, without pedantry, refuse to consider this process in strict conformity with that branch of truth which is called accuracy.’ It is true that, in vol. vi., M. Merle d’Aubigne applies to the year 1538 words uttered by Calvin about twenty-five years later, at the time of his death in 1564:—‘have lived here engaged in strange contests. I have been saluted in mockery of an evening before my own door with fifty or sixty shots of arquebuses. You may imagine how that must astound a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I always was.’ But these words, spoken by Calvin many years after the event, referred precisely to that year, 1538. The historian has quoted them at the very date to which they belong; nor could he have omitted them without a failure in accuracy. The following is, however, the only proof given of this alleged want of accuracy:— ‘At the time when Calvin had just succeeded in establishing in Geneva what he considered to be the essential conditions of a Christian church, he had published, in the name of his colleagues, some statement of the success which they had just achieved, and had given expression to the sentiments of satisfaction and hope 6 which they felt. Of this statement, to which events almost immediately gave a cruel contradiction, M. Merle has made use to depict the personal feelings and disposition of Calvin after the check which, his work had sustained. The conditions are altogether changed. Instead of triumphing, the reformer is banished; and, nevertheless, the language which he used in the days of triumph is employed to characterize his steadfastness and constancy in the days of exile.’ The document here spoken of is a preface by Calvin to the Latin edition of his Catechism. In the original edition it bears date March 1538. It is now before us; we have read and re-read it, and we cannot imagine by what strange illusion there could be seen in it a statement of the success which Calvin and his colleagues had just achieved. It does not contain one vestige of satisfaction or of hope, not a trace of triumph. It is an unaccountable mistake to suppose that it was written in days of triumph. It was written in March 1538, in the very stress of the storm which, a few days later, April 23, was to result in the banishment of the reformer and the momentary destruction of his work at Geneva. This storm had begun to take shape on November 25, 1537, at a general council (assembly of the people), in which the most violent attacks had been directed against Calvin and against the government of the republic.
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