A World Lit Only by Fire (35 page)

At the outbreak of the revolution most of the humanists had been ordained priests, and several, because of their eminence,
were picked by their superiors to serve as blacklisters, leading the Church’s counterrevolution. Suspecting Protestant sympathies
among his clergy, the bishop of Meaux appointed Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples his vicar general with instructions to weed them
out. Lefèvre, then approaching seventy, was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, the author of works on physics,
mathematics, and Aristotelian ethics, and a Latin translation of Saint Paul’s Epistles. His former pupils—the bishop was
one of them—revered him without exception.

But although he wore vestments and celebrated Mass, Lefèvre was above all a humanist. To expose medieval myths, he proposed
a clearer version of the original New Testament. He was working on a French translation of the Bible, and—like Luther —
he believed that the Gospels, not papal decrees, should be the ultimate court of theological appeal. Lefèvre was incautious
enough to observe also that he thought it “shameful” that bishops should devote their days to hunting and their nights to
drinking, gambling, and mounting
putains
—a criticism which was ill received in Meaux. Suddenly the hunter of heretics was himself condemned as one, and by the Sorbonne
at that. Fleeing Paris, he found sanctuary in Strasbourg, in Blois, and, finally, in Nérac, with Marguerite of Angoulême,
queen of Navarre and protectress of the revolution’s humanist refugees. There he resumed his scholarship and died quietly,
of natural causes, five years later.

Lefèvre was one of Marguerite’s successes. She also had her failures, notably Bonaventure Desperiers and Étienne Dolet. Both
were given her best efforts; nevertheless both died violently in Lyons. Desperiers had been guilty only of bad timing; had
he published his
Cymbalum mundi
before Luther challenged Rome, the Curia would have ignored it. Written in Latin and addressed to fellow humanists, it noted
the flagrant contradictions in the Bible, deplored the persecution of heretics, and mocked miracles. There was nothing new
here. The satires of Erasmus and the German heretics, making the same points, had been more caustic. But in the new age of
intolerance,
Cymbalum
was denounced by both sides—the Catholic witchhunters in the Sorbonne and the Protestant Calvin. Then it was publicly burned
by the official hangman of Paris. Desperiers became too hot even for Marguerite; she was forced to banish him from Nérac.
She sent him money, but the pressure was too much for him. On the run, threatened and hounded, he died, reportedly by his
own hand. Dolet, on the other hand, courted death. A printer as well as a Ciceronian scholar, he clandestinely published books
on the
Index Expurgatorius
until he was summoned before the Inquisition, found guilty, and, despite Marguerite’s attempts to intervene, burned alive.

Some humanists were victims; some became leaders of the revolt. All, when captured, met hideous deaths. Those who had led
became martyrs, but the deaths of leaders and led seem equally senseless. In his
Christianismi restitutio
(
The Restitution of Christianity
) the Spanish-born theologian and physician Michael Servetus dismissed predestination as blasphemy; God, he wrote, condemns
only those who condemn themselves. Servetus was naive enough to send a copy to a preacher who believed in predestination as
the revealed word and who, knowing which church Servetus would attend and when, had him ambushed at prayer. A Protestant council
sentenced him to death by slow fire. Now terrified, aware of his blunder, the condemned author begged for mercy—not for
his life; he knew better than that; he merely wanted to be beheaded. He was denied it. Instead he was burned alive. It took
him half an hour to die.

The Catholics who quartered the body of the Swiss Huldrych Zwingli and burned it on a pyre of dried exrement were equally
merciless; so was Martin Luther, who had regarded Zwingli as a rival and called his ghastly death “a triumph for us.” In the
darkness enveloping Christendom no one recalled that as a young priest the slain Swiss had taught himself Greek to read the
New Testament in the original and possessed a profound knowledge of Tacitus, Pliny, Homer, Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, and Caesar.
All they remembered was that he had said he would prefer “the eternal lot of a Socrates or a Seneca than of a pope.”

Perhaps the most poignant figure in the strife—and certainly one of the most tragic—was Ulrich von Hutten. Once he had
distinguished himself as a humanist, a Franconian knight, a brilliant satirist, and one of the first scholars in central Europe
to cherish the vision of a unified Germany. Like Luther, he had abandoned Latin to help shape the German language as it is
spoken today; his
Gesprächbüchlein
, published the year after Worms, was a greater contribution to linguistics than to theology. But Hutten was one of the committed
humanists, and like most Reformation zealots he displayed more enthusiasm than judgment. Unwisely, he had cast his lot with
Von Sickingen, whose defeat transformed him into a penniless fugitive robbing farms for food as he fled toward Switzerland.
Reaching it, he headed straight for Basel, and Erasmus. He expected his fellow humanist to support him, but that was asking
too much. Not only had his vehement rhetoric offended the man who preached moderation and tolerance; Hutten had denounced
Erasmus as craven for not supporting Luther. Now, in Basel, the victim of his abuse refused to receive him, wryly explaining
that his stove provided too little heat to warm the German’s bones.

Angry, desperate, and ill—his affliction was venereal—Hutten abandoned both dignity and decency by turning to extortion.
He wrote a scurrilous pamphlet about Erasmus (
Expostulation
) and offered to suppress it in exchange for money. Erasmus indignantly refused. Then Hutten began circulating it privately.
The local clergy asked Basel’s city fathers to expel the polemicist, and it was done. Hutten moved to Mulhouse and sent his
manuscript to the press. A mob drove him out. In the summer of 1523 he stumbled into Zurich, only to find that there, too,
the city council was preparing a motion of expulsion. Homeless, broke, banished from society, he retreated to an island in
the Lake of Zurich, and there, aged thirty-five, he succumbed to syphilis. His sole possession was his pen. Valuable only
a year earlier, it was now worthless.

A
LL
P
ROTESTANT
regimes were stiffly doctrinal to a degree unknown—until now—in Rome. John Calvin’s Geneva, however, represented the
ultimate in repression. The city-state of Genève, which became known as the Protestant Rome, was also, in effect, a police
state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over
all. In physique, temperament, and conviction, Calvin (1509–1564) was the inverted image of the freewheeling, permissive,
high-living popes whose excesses had led to Lutheran apostasy. Frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating
eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered. The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called
“pigs,” “asses,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing
him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No evidence was produced, but he was tortured day and night for a month
till he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. Penultimately, his feet were nailed to the wood;
ultimately he was decapitated.

Calvin’s justification for this excessive rebuke reveals the mindset of all Reformation inquisitors, Protestant and Catholic
alike: “When the papists are so harsh and violent in defense of their superstitions,” he asked, “are not Christ’s magistrates
shamed to show themselves less ardent in defense of the sure truth?” Clearly, he would have condemned the Jesus of Matthew
(5:39, 44) as a heretic.
^*
In Calvin’s Orwellian theocracy, established in 1542, acts of God—earthquakes, lightning, flooding—were acts of Satan.
(Luther, of course, agreed.) Copernicus was branded a fraud, attendance at church and sermons was compulsory, and Calvin himself
preached at great length three or four times a week. Refusal to take the Eucharist was a crime. The Consistory, which made
no distinction between religion and morality, could summon anyone for questioning, investigate any charge of backsliding,
and entered homes periodically to be sure no one was cheating Calvin’s God. Legislation specified the number of dishes to be served at each meal and the color of garments worn. What one was permitted
to wear depended upon who one was, for never was a society more class-ridden. Believing that every child of God had been foreordained,
Calvin was determined that each know his place; statutes specified the quality of dress and the activities allowed in each
class.

But even the elite—the clergy, of course—were allowed few diversions. Calvinists worked hard because there wasn’t much
else they were permitted to do. “Feasting” was proscribed; so were dancing, singing, pictures, statues, relics, church bells,
organs, altar candles; “indecent or irreligious” songs, staging or attending theatrical plays; wearing rouge, jewelry, lace,
or “immodest” dress; speaking disrespectfully of your betters; extravagant entertainment; swearing, gambling, playing cards,
hunting, drunkenness; naming children after anyone but figures in the Old Testament; reading “immoral or irreligious” books;
and sexual intercourse, except between partners of different genders who were married to one another.

To show that Calvinists were merciful, first offenders were let off with reprimands and two-time losers with fines. After
that, those who flouted the law were in real trouble. The Consistory made no allowances for probation, suspended sentences,
or rehabilitation programs, and Calvin assumed that everyone enjoyed community service without being sentenced to it. Excommunication
and banishment from the community were considered dire, though those living in a more permissive age might find them less
appalling. In any event, there were plenty of other penalties, some of them as odd as the offenses they punished. A father
who stubbornly insisted upon calling his newborn son Claude spent four days in the canton jail; so did a woman convicted of
wearing her hair at an “immoral” height. A child who struck his parents was summarily beheaded. Abortion was not a political
issue because any single woman discovered with child was drowned. (So, if he could be identified, was her impregnator.) Violating
the seventh commandment was also a capital offense. Calvin’s stepson was found in bed with another woman; his daughter-in-law,
behind a haystack with another man. All four miscreants were executed.

Of course, it proved impossible to legislate virtue. Some of Calvin’s devoted followers insisted that it was possible, that
the Consistory’s moral straitjacket worked; Bernardino Ochino, an ex-Catholic who had found asylum in the city-state, wrote
that “Unchastity, adultery, and impure living, such as prevail in many places where I have lived, are here unknown.” In fact
they were widely known there; the proof lies in the council’s records. A remarkable number of unmarried young woman who worshiped
with Ochino managed to carry their pregnancies to term unde-

John Calvin (1509–1564)

tected. Some abandoned their issue on church steps or alongside forest trails; some named their male co-conspirator, who then
married them at sword’s point; some lived as single parents, for not even Calvinists could orphan an innocent infant.

On other issues they were adamant, however. The ultimate crime, of course, was heresy. It was even blacker than witchcraft,
though sorcerers could not be expected to appreciate the distinction; after a devastating outbreak of plague, fourteen Geneva
women, found guilty of persuading Satan to afflict the community, were burned alive. But because the soul was more precious
than the flesh, the life expectancy of the apostate was even shorter. Anyone whose church attendance became infrequent was
destined for the stake. Holding religious beliefs at odds with those of the majority was no excuse in Geneva or, for that
matter, in other Protestant theocracies. It was a consummate irony of the Reformation that the movement against Rome, which
had begun with an affirmation of individual judgment, now repudiated it entirely. Apostasy was regarded as an offense to God
and treason to the state. As such it was punished with swift, agonizing death. One historian wrote, “Catholicism, which had
preached this view of heresy, became heresy in its turn.”