The Meaux Experiment I: from Clerical Reform to Evangelical Renewal, 15181523
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CHAPTER FIVE THE MEAUX EXPERIMENT I: FROM CLERICAL REFORM TO EVANGELICAL RENEWAL, 15181523 Th e Meaux Reform (1521–1525) was the fi rst and among the most important founding episodes of the Reformation in France.1 Testifying to its contemporary impact, the Faculty of Th eology of Paris, journal writers, and foreign observers portrayed the Meaux group as infl uential, and therefore dangerous, banner carriers of the ‘Lutheran’ heresy. In contrast, the European movements of biblical humanism and the Luther aff air of the same period, which infl uenced the Meaux experiment, have left little trace in France.2 Most of the few French fi gures known to have been actively engaged with these movements, humanists in Paris, Poitiers, Lyon, Avignon, and Toulouse, had connections with the Meaux group. Th us, while Lefèvre and his disciples created a sensation, there is 1 All histories of France and of the French Reformation for this period give the Meaux reform prominent coverage. For the best modern studies, see: Michel Veis- sière, L’évêque Guillaume Briçonnet (1470–1534): Contribution à la connaissance de la Réforme catholique à la veille du Concile de Trente (Provins: Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie, 1986), a biography of the bishop of Meaux, which provides an able reconstruction of events. Henry Heller provides a masterful analysis of the evangelical and mystical thought of Briçonnet, Lefèvre d’Étaples, and Marguerite as well as their broader social impact at Meaux. See his “Popular Roots of the Reformation: ‘Lutherans of Meaux’ (1525–1546),” ch. in Th e Conquest of Poverty; “Marguerite of Navarre and the Reformers of Meaux,” BHR 33 (1971), 279–310; “Nicholas of Cusa and early French evangelicalism,” ARG 63 (1972), 6–21; “Th e Briçonnet Case Reconsidered,”Journal of Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1972), 223–258; “Th e Evangelicalism of Lefèvre d’Étaples: 1525,” Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972), 42–77; and “Famine, Revolt and Heresy at Meaux: 1521–1525,” ARG 68 (1977), 133–157. Th eses articles reprise the bulk of Heller’s dissertation, “Reform and Reformers at Meaux, 1518–1525,” Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, New York, 1969. Th e Meaux reform and the early infl uence of the German Reformation in France comprise a major section of the third volume of Imbart de la Tour’s rich Les origines de la Réforme, 58–272; see inter alia for Meaux, 150–153, 158–169, 185–189, 206–235, 239–241. 2 Drawing on evidence from municipal and episcopal archives, Imbart de la Tour established that during the early 1520s Lutheran ideas made a signifi cant impact at Paris, Bordeaux, Avignon, Meaux, Grenoble, Bourges, and Rouen, Origines 3, 169–172. Nathaniel Weiss ably studied the connections in the 1520s between French evangelicals at Meaux and beyond in the 1520s with the reformers in Strasbourg, Basel, Zurich, and Wittenberg. See chapter 7, note 13. 152 chapter five – the meaux experiment i little evidence that the Reformation movement initially enjoyed much support in France. Over the next thirty years, however, members of the Meaux group would go on to lead a broad spectrum of French people seeking religious renewal. Th e reform at Meaux initiated by Briçonnet and transformed by the Fabrists has been studied from a variety of perspectives, but we still have no full picture of their intentions. Nor can we adequately explain the relationship of the Meaux reform to the growth of a broader evangeli- cal movement. Michel Veissière, Henry Heller, and René-Jacques Lovy have traced the development of the religious dissent at Meaux aft er the departure of the Fabrists in 1525 to another major episode in the early Reformation in French: the ill-fated establishment there of the fi rst Reformed church on French soil in 1545.3 No study has attempted to follow the careers of the Meaux group aft er 1525, tracing the growth of a larger evangelical sodality around them. Most scholars point to the widely diverging trajectories over the following decades of a few notable ex-Meaux campaigners—from Guillaume Farel, who become the leader of Swiss French Protestantism before Calvin, on one extreme, to Martial Mazurier, who become an early champion of the Jesuits, on the other—in order to demonstrate that no such thing as ‘an evangeli- cal movement’ actually emerged. Rather, they assert that evangelicals were individualistic and disunited, religious aspirants who had at best a confused longing for spiritual renewal but lacked a doctrinal core, social grounding, or powerful leaders.4 In a still unsurpassed 1845 biographical essay on Marguerite’s almoner, Gérard Roussel, Charles Schmidt came close to arguing for a post-Meaux evangelical sodality.5 While evoking this broad horizon, his treatment was too limited to give more than a glimpse of the larger picture. In order to trace the development of Marguerite’s network around a core of ex-Meaux campaigners, we need to inspect those cradle years, when the Fabrists transformed Briçonnet’s episcopal reform program by directing it toward the new goal of evangelical renewal. We will 3 See note 1. Veissière only recounts the history of Meaux until the end of Briçonnet’s episcopacy, 1534. 4 For a critical assessment of the historiographical consensus about the formlessness of the early evangelical movement in France, see the introduction. 5 Charles Schmidt, Gérard Roussel: Prédicateur de la reine Marguerite de Navarre. Mémoire, servant à l’histoire des premières tentatives faites pour introduire la Réforme en France (Strasbourg: Schmidt and Grukner, 1845; repr. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970)..