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Gérard Roussel: an Irenic Religious Change Agent

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Gérard Roussel: an Irenic Religious Change Agent Gérard Roussel: An Irenic Religious Change Agent By Axel Uwe Schoeber B.Ed., University of British Columbia, 1976 M.Div., Regent College, 1981 Th.M., Regent College, 1987 D.Min., Faith Lutheran Seminary, 1990 M.A., University of Victoria, 2005 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of History © Axel Uwe Schoeber, 2013 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Gérard Roussel: An Irenic Religious Change Agent By Axel Uwe Schoeber B.Ed., University of British Columbia, 1976 M.Div., Regent College, 1981 Th.M., Regent College, 1987 D.Min., Faith Lutheran Seminary, 1990 M.A., University of Victoria, 2005 Supervisory Committee Dr. Sara Beam, Supervisor (Department of History) Dr. Mitchell Lewis Hammond, Departmental Member (Department of History) Dr. Andrea McKenzie, Departmental Member (Department of History) Dr. Hélène Cazes, Outside Member (Department of French) iii Supervisory Committee Dr. Sara Beam, Supervisor (Department of History) Dr. Mitchell Lewis Hammond, Departmental Member (Department of History) Dr. Andrea McKenzie, Departmental Member (Department of History) Dr. Hélène Cazes, Outside Member (Department of French) ABSTRACT Gérard Roussel was a prominent French ecclesiastical leader in the sixteenth century and yet is little known. The Catholic, Protestant and Enlightenment historical narratives have all ignored him. A member of the renewal-minded Circle of Meaux from 1521 to 1525, he collaborated with the famous humanist, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, to produce an evangelical preaching manual. This study examines its emphases. When this Circle was crushed, Roussel fled to Strasbourg and admired the Reformation taking place there. Marguerite de Navarre recalled him to France and became his patron in various ways. He translated into French a children’s catechism originally published by the German reformer Johann Brenz. The translation puzzles readers today, because it is too complicated for children. This study suggests it was targeted at the royal children to influence their future rule. Roussel became the Lenten preacher in Paris in 1533, experiencing great success. John Calvin was one of his admirers. While traditionalists reacted with tumult, the crowds flocking to hear Roussel suggest that the French evangelicals were more significant in the first third of the century than is commonly understood. They offered a “third option” in France, in addition to the traditionalists and the rising Protestants. Consistently, these evangelicals sought reform of the French church and society through gospel iv preaching and irenic living. They strongly rejected church schism. Roussel accepted the Bishopric of Oloron in 1536, where he diligently taught, preached and modeled his irenic evangelical emphases. Calvin viciously turned on him as one practising dissimulation. Roussel prepared both a guide for episcopal visitation of a diocese and an extensive catechism for theological students that had the same goal as the preaching manual produced in Meaux. Traditionalist opposition ensured they would not be published, but we have a manuscript available. This study examines them, finding that Roussel was intent on building bridges between all reformers, both Protestant and Catholic. He avoids, as a key example, embracing any of the hotly contested positions on the Lord’s Supper that surrounded him. He instead constructed a simplified biblical Mass, consistent with much traditional piety, but clearly emphasizing gospel preaching as well. Killed in an attack by a Catholic traditionalist in 1555, his life points to the French evangelical embrace of both gospel preaching and irenic living. Recent scholarship has discovered that such irenic impulses had a greater impact on Christian society in this era than has often been recognized. This study deepens that awareness. v Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ii Abstract iii Table of Contents v Acknowledgements vi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 The Case of the Missing Bishop: A Review of Pertinent Literature 13 Chapter 3 Collaborator on a Preaching Manual 76 Chapter 4 Lobbying a Future King 139 Chapter 5 A Bishop Dedicated to Faith—Irenic Faith 171 Chapter 6 Roussel’s Simplified Mass 205 Chapter 7 Conclusion 257 Bibliography 263 vi Acknowledgements Many people have supported me during this research project, and it would be difficult to list them all. They should know how grateful I am for their patience and encouragement over the past few years. I trust they will find pleasure in the final outcome, even as I find pleasure in offering it to them, in particular, and to those who are eager to learn from our collective past. It is essential to cite the role of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. In naming me as the Winnifred Lonsdale Fellow for the year beginning in September, 2006, they provided me the environment in which I began to ask questions about the paucity of references to irenicism during the religious changes of sixteenth century Europe. I gratefully acknowledge the stimulation and support of the Centre in launching me on this research track. Chapter 1 Introduction Gérard Roussel mounted the elevated pulpit to preach. He had come to Mauléon as bishop of the Diocese of Oloron, in what is now south-western France. Long known for sympathy to themes emphasized by Protestants, he proposed a reduction in (not elimination of) the number of saints’ days that should be observed. The people could use the time for more productive pursuits.1 Suddenly, a man rushed forward with an axe to shatter the supports for the pulpit, and Roussel came crashing down amid the splintering wood. He was picked up “half- dead”2 and carried back by his friends to Oloron for treatment. The physicians there prescribed a treatment of “taking the waters,” but he never made it to his destination. Roussel died en route to the hot springs from injuries suffered in the fall. The year was 1555. His attacker— Arnauld de Maytie, a country gentleman—was tried before the Parlement in Bordeaux and acquitted on account of his “pious and beautiful action.”3 A Catholic bishop is murdered by a devoted Catholic layman, who is acquitted by a largely Catholic court because they found his action “pious and beautiful” . De Maytie’s actions were affirmed by many Catholic activists, an activism mirrored and countered by zealous Protestants in the 1550s. In contrast, Roussel embodied an attempt at an irenic approach to renewal. 1 The concern for increased economic productivity is not new with the business pages of twentieth- and twenty- first century newspapers. 2 This account is found in Charles Schmidt, Gérard Roussel, Prédicateur de la Reine Marguerite de Navarre: Mémoire, servant à l’histoire des premières tentatives faites pour introduire la reformation en France (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970; originally published in Strasbourg, 1845), pp. 163-164. 3 Schmidt, Prédicateur, p. 164. 2 Gérard Roussel was famous in his day. A persistent leader in church reform over more than three decades, he was widely known in church, government and legal circles in France and beyond. He had friendships (not all lasted) with a number of leading church reformers: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Guillaume Briçonnet, Martin Bucer, William Farel, John Calvin and Philip Melanchthon. Read the history or the theology of this era and you will encounter Roussel’s friends, but not likely Roussel’s name. He was equal in stature in his time to those just named (except Lefèvre d’Étaples and Calvin). Why has he almost disappeared from the history books? This study will suggest an answer. It will also introduce the reader to the life and thought of Gérard Roussel, a man fascinating and controversial, sympathetic and difficult to categorize. The study will also suggest that allowing Roussel to drop out of our historical vision has meant that we have too easily missed a significant swath of early sixteenth century life, thought and piety. Large numbers desired religious change, but by peaceful means. They approached renewal with an irenic spirit. There is no doubt that the aggressive and bloody headlines of the period loom large in the historical imagination. Religious motivations were part and parcel of these events, but then so were economic considerations, diplomacy, state-building and raw power politics. However, we may do well to remind ourselves that very few of us today live any part of the headlines we read daily in newspapers. Our stories are quite different. Could it not be so in other eras as well? Roussel will open for us a window into the motivations and beliefs of those who may not have dominated the headlines, but whose worldview was nonetheless also significant. They were more numerous than most now realize. 3 How should we understand the irenicism practised by these people?4 It was a form of Christian neighbourliness that took seriously Jesus’ call to “love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) The general nature of this command means there are a considerable variety of ways to put it into practice. According to need and circumstances, it manifest itself in the sixteenth century through many pragmatic choices, a reality noted by many scholars recently, as we shall see. Difficult to define precisely, non-violence and a measure of doctrinal flexibility were generally characteristic of this neighbourly mindset. Flexibility over beliefs could take the form of resisting pressure to be overly precise in clarifying dogmas or it could manifest in a conscious refusal to distance oneself from those whose doctrines were known to be different. For Catholics like Roussel, it meant a rejection of schism, while still regarding most Protestants as companions in the faith. For Protestants—who had chosen schism— it meant an openness to pursuing reunion of the churches or, at least, to cooperating with Catholics and other Protestants (though usually the Anabaptists were not regarded kindly, even by such irenicists).
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