The

American Historical Review

"AS

HOTMAN AND THE "FRANCO-GALLIA"

S long as the world remains a world," quaintly observes Pierre Bayle, "there will everywhere be ambulatory doctrines dependent on times and places, - true birds of passage which are in one country during the summer and in another during the winter, - wandering lights that, like the Cartesian comets, illuminate successively several vortices." 1

The words of the great critic were uttered with primary reference to the doctrine of the passive obedience due by subjects to their prince and to the attitude of the Huguenots, and especially of their foremost writer on jurisprudence, François Hotman, to that doctrine. For it cannot be denied that the history of the Huguenots, even more than the life of Hotman himself, gave point to the caustic observation.

Great propositions, whether political, social, or religious, are rarely formulated in advance of the necessity, supposed or real, that demands their announcement to the world. They are for the most part the challenge of an accepted error, a gauntlet thrown. down for any of the champions of the error to pick up.

The first advocates of the reformatory movement in France had no reason to call in question the absolute right of kings to command their subjects, and the absolute duty of obedience on the part of subjects, save on one point-the religious convictions, the conscience. They were, indeed, from the very start, accused of a tendency to innovation, not less in state than in church; and although they indignantly denied the charge, their enemies made all the capital possible out of it. It will be remembered that a papal nuncio is said on one occasion to have made this a powerful and effective argument to stop forever the half1 Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, article Hotman.

formed, or, at least, half-expressed intention of Francis I. to imitate the example of a change of religion lately given him by Henry VIII. beyond the British Channel. "Sire," he retorted, to the monarch's petulant threat, "to speak with all frankness, you would be the first to repent your rash step. Your loss would be greater than the pope's; for a new religion established in the midst of a people involves nothing short of a change of prince." The king, we are given to understand, believed the prelate's assertion, and, to the end of his life, looked with suspicion upon the reformers as covert revolutionists.1

For many a year, the slightest pretext, or no pretext at all, sufficed their opponents to start from time to time the story that the monarch's Protestant subjects were plotting to divide a part or the whole of France into cantons fashioned upon the model offered by their Swiss neighbors.

Meanwhile the leading writers in the interest of the reformation were careful, both to inculcate upon their followers the duty of submission to constituted authority and to exempt from that submission the domain of conscience. Every form of government, in their view, must be respected, as deriving its very existence from the providential ordering of God; but no government must be obeyed when it enjoins that which is contrary to God's commands. This can best be seen by noticing the manner in which John Calvin deals with the interpretation of one or two passages in the New Testament, which tyranny has, in all ages, adopted as its proof-texts, and by means of which it has sought to give to absolutism the appearance of a Biblical sanction. In the first of these (Rom. xiii. 1) Calvin finds the principle that "albeit tyrannies and unjust dominations, inasmuch as they are full of deformity, are not of the ordinary government; yet, nevertheless, the right of government is ordained of God for the health of mankind," and that therefore the apostle commands that the authority and government of magistrates be willingly and cheerfully received and reverenced as profitable to mankind. In the other passage (1 Peter ii. 13) the reformer regards the meaning of the writer to be that obedience is due to all who rule, because they have been raised to that honor not by chance, but by God's providence. Many, he remarks, are wont to inquire too scrupulously into the question, by what right power has been attained; but this alone ought to content us, that power is possessed and exercised. In strict accord with this, Calvin views the injustice of rulers (the Romans in Asia Minor, for example) both in acquiring 1 Brantôme, Euvres, IX. 202. See The Rise of the Huguenots, I. 103.

and in administering government, as an abuse which does not alter the great and divine end for which government was instituted. Princes may, so far as they can, pervert the holy ordinance, and magistrates, instead of bearing the image of God, become wild beasts; yet government itself, being established by God, ought to be so highly valued, that we shall honor even tyrants when in power. Besides which, he declares that there has never been a tyranny, nor can one be imagined, however cruel and unbridled, in which some portion of equity has not appeared; and that some kind of government, however deformed and corrupt it may be, is always better and more beneficial than anarchy.

Evidently, in all this, there is nothing calculated to give aid and comfort to monarchical despotism. The commentator, in fact, finds no reason for the express mention of the "king" by St. Peter, in the last passages referred to, but that the regal form of government was more disliked than any other, and that under it all other forms were included. In other words, it was authority as authority, and not royal authority in particular, that Calvin, interpreting the Bible according to the intention of the writers, as he thought, would have honored and submitted to. The warrant of the king to rule in his kingdom was precisely the same as that of the magistrate, of whatever degree, to exercise his functions in his lower sphere of action; both were in the same sense ordained of God. Calvin's contempt for the arrogant and exclusive claim of kings to this prerogative, appears most conspicuously in the indignant passages from his commentary on Daniel, which John Milton has pointed out in his treatise on "The tenure of kings and magistrates," and which he thus translates: 1 "Nowadays, monarchs pretend always in their titles, to be kings by the grace of God; but how many of them to this end only pretend it, that they may reign without control; for to what purpose is the grace of God mentioned in the title of kings, but that they may acknowledge no superior? In the meanwhile, God, whose name they use to support themselves, they willingly would tread under their feet. It is, therefore, a mere cheat, when they boast to reign by the grace of God."2 "Earthly princes depose themselves, while they rise against God; yea, they are unworthy to be numbered among men: rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads, than to obey them."

1 Milton's Prose Works, 243. 2 In the original:

Merus igitur fucus est, quod jactant se Dei gratia pollere dominatione." Praelect. in Danielem, in Baum, Cunitz et Reuss, Ioan. Calvini Opera

(Bruns., 1889), XL. 670.

After all, however, the reformer preferred to take into his view no "intolerable oppression" that might justify the throwing off of the tyrant's yoke, and limited himself to the purely religious aspect of the case. It was when they rose against God that earthly princes ipso facto deposed themselves. It was in their commands that antagonized the higher commands of Heaven, that they might justly, indeed that they must, be resisted. The principles which he inculcated might lead to ulterior consequences for which he made no present provision: it was enough for him to enunciate them. More perilous in the aspect of things which confronted him than even the danger of political tyranny, was the danger of insubordination, the menace not to society alone, but to religion as well, from the proneness of men toward a contempt of all civil authority that had manifested itself in places, and tended, by its assumption of a religious garb, to bring religion itself into disrepute.

Yet while he was so conservative as to refuse to private persons the right to do anything else than obey and suffer, it must be noticed that Calvin concedes the right of resistance to royal authority to such magistrates as might be constituted to curb the too great cupidity and license of kings. And it is particularly noticeable that among these he mentions not only the ephors of old time at Sparta and the tribunes of the people at Rome, but the states-general so hated by absolute monarchs.1

It was in accord with Calvin's teachings, and with the instructions of the teachers that had been moulded under his influence at Geneva, that, in the midst of aggravated persecution such as was endured during the reigns of Francis I. and his son Henry II., its victims refused, it is true, to obey the monarch where the royal commands conflicted with the "higher law," but nevertheless abstained from making any uprising, any armed resistance, any violent attempt to assert their natural rights. Accordingly, in the last days of the reign of Henry II., the first religious synod of the French Protestant churches placed at the end of their confession of faith, as its thirty-ninth and fortieth articles, a frank expression of loyalty. In the one article they profess their belief in the divine authority of government, established by God in the form of kingdoms, republics, and all other sorts of principalities, “be they hereditary or otherwise." In the other they declare: "We therefore hold that we must obey their laws and statutes, pay

1 "Et comme sont, possible, aujourd'huy en chacun royaume les trois estats quand ils sont assemblez." Institution chrestienne, liv. 4, ch. 20. In Baum, Cunitz et Reuss, IV. 1160.

tribute, imposts, and other dues, and bear the yoke of subjection of a good and free will, even be they unfaithful (infidèles); provided that the sovereign authority of God remain in its integrity. Therefore we detest all those that would reject the higher powers, introduce a community and confusion of goods, and overthrow the order of justice." 1

When, not many days after these words were penned, Henry II. lost his life in the tilt to which he had challenged the reluctant captain of his Scotch archers, the course of history was changed to a degree that no one could have anticipated. A youth, a minor in fact if not in name, succeeded to the vacant throne. Now the rule of a minor is always the rule of those subjects that are so fortunate as to secure the control of the king's person or his mind. Francis II. was, unhappily, just old enough to seem to be entitled to exercise the functions of royalty and render the appointment of a regency unnecessary, while yet he deputed the full powers of government to others, especially to his wife's uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise. The sequel is familiar to all readers of history. Within a few months the new favorites had been violent enough and clumsy enough to arouse a spirit of opposition to their administration of the affairs of France, that must, in the very nature of things, soon find expression. Persecution was continued; indeed, was aggravated. Now, persecution at the hands of a king in the full possession of his mental powers is one thing; persecution under an immature and weakminded boy-king, at the hands of nobles, is quite another thing. To see a member of the high court of parliament executed, would, in any case, have moved the people; but to see the most virtuous judge upon the bench strangled and then burned, dying with words of love upon his lips and assurances that he died not as a thief or a robber, but for the Gospel, this was beyond the power of men of principle to endure with equanimity. To religious motives, political causes were added. The result was an explosion which is generally known as the Tumult of Amboise, an unfortunate attempt at an uprising which the Guises quelled with a needless display of cruelty, attended by such bloodshed that it has rendered infamous both the prelate and the duke.

The Guises found it to their interest to consider the uprising, and to represent it to the king, as directed against him and against his royal authority. A letter was accordingly despatched in the name of Francis II. to the chief judicial officers throughout

1 Recueil des choses mémorables faites et passées pour le faict de Religion et estat de ce Royaume, Premier volume. s.l. 1565. Page 69.