cated, he was immediately ordered to quit the house. Perrin, seeing that the affair was likely to take a serious turn, fled from Geneva, and was followed by Vandel, Berthelier, and some others. The Two Hundred again referred the case to the ordinary council, with a recommendation to make a severe example of the criminals. For a fortnight the fugitives were daily summoned by the public herald, by sound of trumpet; but they wrote to the council, refusing to appear, unless a public guarantee of safety were given to them. On the day appointed for their trial five of the fugitives were condemned. Before sentence was pronounced upon them, a general assembly was convened, in which their crimes were recited; and as they did not appear to purge themselves, their condemnation was of course confirmed. Four rioters who had been taken were executed on the 21st of May. They protested with their last breath that they were not privy to any treason or conspiracy; but that they had merely endeavored to prevent the making of so many citizens, and to protect the city from the dominion of foreigners.1 Calvin, however, characterizes their confession as one which showed them to be too guilty to allow any chance of escape. Sentence was pronounced by the council on Perrin and the other fugitives on the 3d of June. They were condemned to lose their heads, and to be quartered; Perrin, moreover, to have his hand chopped off, with which he had seized the bâton of the syndic. This sentence was executed on his effigy.3

Meanwhile he and his accomplices, having escaped to the territories of Berne, begged the mediation of that city in their favor. The Bernese accordingly wrote to Geneva, tendering their good offices for the pacification of these troubles; and on the 13th of June sent deputies with the same offer, who were also instructed to mention that Berne was willing to treat with Geneva respecting a renewal of the alliance. But even this bait did not allure the Genevese to retract their sentence on the mutineers.1 Calvin describes the Bernese deputies who came on their behalf as finding a united city, and the verdict against the fugitives universally acquiesced

in.5

The history of this affair, even from Calvin's own pen, leaves the impression that the power of Perrin and his party was, after all, contemptible. His supporters in the ordinary council were few or none. In the council of Two Hundred, 2 Ep. 207. 3 Spon, 1. c.

1 Ruchat, vi., 139.

4 Ruchat, vi., 140.

5 Ep. 207.

THE LIBERTINES DISCOMFITED.

329

even though he seems to have tampered with the elections, he was in a minority, as appears from the ministers carrying their point respecting excommunication; and also from the expulsion and condemnation of Perrin himself by that body. That the Genevese people were not for him is shown by the almost ludicrous failure of his attempt at insurrection, as well as by the sentence passed upon him and his associates being confirmed by the general assembly. The whole business reads like a caricature of the Catilinarian conspiracy.

1

2

Calvin's proceedings were attributed by his opponents to feelings of personal hatred, and a desire of shedding their blood; and this charge has been revived by two modern historians-namely, by Galiffe, in his "Notices Généalogiques," and by Thourel, in his "History of Geneva.' A recent biographer of Calvin has rested one of his main arguments against the truth of this charge on the assertion that such motives were not imputed to Calvin, even by the Libertines themselves. But this author must have overlooked a passage in Calvin's own letter, where we find it stated that such an intention had been ascribed to him; nay, Calvin was even accused of standing by while the prisoners were tortured, and of urging on the severest measures against them.3 The same writer endeavors to make it appear that the affair was a purely political one. But this is not consistent with the records of the trials, as cited by himself. The sentence on Philibert Berthelier recited that it was inflicted " pour les crimes horribles et détestables de conspiration contre la sainte institution et réformation Chrestienne, et contre cette cité, bien public, et tranquillité d'icelle, &c." P. Berthelier saved himself by flight, but his brother Francis was apprehended, and was one of those who were executed. Now, the points on which he was convicted were four, viz., 1. That, like his brother, he wished to deprive the consistory of the right of excommunication, because it made Calvin a bishop and prince of Geneva; and that he had hoped that this opportunity

1 66 "Endlich finde ich gegen die Anklage des Herrn Galiffe einen schlagenden Beweis dafür, dass Calvin keinesweges gegen diese Leute thätig war, in dem Umstand dass die Libertiner selbst durchaus nicht Calvin als ihren Verfolger anklagen."-P. Henry, iii., Beil. vii., p. 121.

2 "I say nothing about myself, whom they have gratuitously taken for their enemy. For as to the shameless charge that I was compassing their death, it is too absurd to need any apology."-Ep. 207.

3 Trechsel, Antitr., i., 205.

4"Also hatte er (Calvin) kein kirchliches Interesse dabei zu verfechten." -P. Henry, iii., Beil. vii., p. 118. Yet he contradicts this himself a few sentences afterward: "Die Verurtheilten wollten die bestehende politische und religiöse Ordnung stürtzen."

the

would be the means of banishing Calvin. 2. That he had opposed the reception of the new citizens, who would have had the majority in the great council. This was styled in process crimen læse majestatis, or high treason. 3. That he had expressed himself loudly against the doctrine of the Reformation received at Geneva. 4. That he had instigated the lieutenant of police to his factious conduct, in opposing the citizenship of the French refugees.' Now, out of the four grounds here assigned for this sentence of death upon Francis Berthelier, it is remarkable that two are for attacks upon Calvin's doctrine and discipline, and for a desire to deprive him of his ecclesiastical power, and to drive him from Geneva. The other two are evidently mere pretenses. It could have been no treason to oppose the admission of the French refugees to the rights of citizenship, unless it were done in an illegal manner. Now it is true, as we have related, that the lieutenant of police, at the instigation of the Libertines, had attempted to overawe the council on that point; but we learn from Calvin himself, that the council had overlooked that attempt, and had dismissed the lieutenant himself, the chief actor in it, with a simple reprimand. We can hardly, therefore, think that political views were the chief, much less the only motive for these executions, as Dr. Henry would have us to believe; and though Calvin may not have been actuated by any desire of personal vengeance, still we can not but look upon them as having been the result of his power, of the intimate connection which he had established between church and state, and of his determination to uphold his scheme of ecclesiastical discipline, without much regard to the means which he used for that purpose.

The Genevese confiscated the estates of the fugitives, made any proposition for their recall a capital offense, and ordered their wives to quit Geneva. * The refugees were again permitted to carry arms; and on the 8th of September an edict was published for suppressing the office of captain-general, which had been held by Perrin.5 On the other side, the

1 P. Henry, iii., Beil. vii., p. 120.

2 "But because the council were of opinion that nothing should be done by arbitrary violence, they pardoned for the present a manifest conspiracy. The lieutenant was only reprimanded for having lent himself to those factious men in so unjust a cause."-Ep. 207.

3 "Obgleich in diesem Process viel von Reformation und kirchlichen Dingen die Rede ist, und derselbe dem Anschein nach einen kirchlichreligiösen Zweck hat, so war er doch rein politisch, und das Religiöse war nur Aeusserliche."-P. Henry, iii., Beil. vii., p. 122.

P. Henry, iii., 380.

5 Grénus, Fragmens Biographiques.

LL FEELING BETWEEN BERNE AND GENEVA.

1

2

331

fugitives, under the protection of Berne, committed outrages on such citizens of Geneva as they found on the Bernese territories, and attacked Calvin and the Genevese council with all sorts of reproaches and calumnies. All this tended to augment the ill-feeling which had been growing up between the two cities, although their mutual interests at this juncture demanded a renewal of the alliance which was about to expire. Calvin's stiffness presented the greatest obstacle to the accomplishment of this object; and Bullinger earnestly begged him to make concessions for the sake of peace. The cantons of Zurich, Bâle, and Schaffhausen, exerted their mediation without effect. Berne authorized the exiles to make reprisals on Genevese citizens, as the government of Geneva refused to restore them to their estates. The bailiff of Ternier, in the jurisdiction of Berne, in whose province the fugitives had committed some violence on Genevese subjects, having been applied to by the procureur-général of Geneva for justice, even gave a sentence by which he liberated the exiles from the condemnation passed on them by the council of Geneva, and condemned the syndics, council, and people of that city, to make them reparation, to beg their pardon, and to pay the costs of the suit.3 This sentence caused much alarm and indignation at Geneva; but, on an appeal to Berne, it was superseded. At length, the victory gained by Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Piémont, over Henry II., at St. Quentin, in August, 1557, which threatened both cities with danger, induced them to renew their alliance in the following November. During this interval of alarm, the Genevese having published on the 12th of October a permission for all foreigners who wished to do so to retire from their city, so far was any one from quitting it, that two days afterward nearly three hundred refugees were admitted as citizens.5

1 Ruchat, vi., 141. 3 Ruchat, vi., 190.

2 Trechsel, i., 206. 4 Ibid, p. 228.

5 "On recoit trois-cents habitans le même matin, sçavoir, deux-cents Français, cinquante Anglais, vingt-cinq Italiens, quatre Espagnols, &c.; tellement que l'antichambre du Conseil ne les pouvoit tous contenir."-Registres, 14 Oct., 1557. Grénus, Fragmens Biographiques.

CHAPTER XII.

Controversy with the Lutherans-Attacks of Westphal-Calvin answers him-Calvin's Violence-Urges Melancthon to declare himself-Mission of Farel and Beza-Their Disingenuousness-Bullinger Offended-The Marian Exiles-"Troubles of Frankfort"-Lutheran Persecutions-Calvin visits Frankfort-Return of the Marian Exiles.

DURING these disputes with his enemies at home, and with the Bernese clergy, Calvin was also engaged in a controversy with some of the Lutheran divines on the subject of the eucharist. While he was residing at Strasburgh, the Lutherans had regarded him as belonging to their church; although in the confession which he had delivered in to the ministers of that city, in 1539, he had as little recognized a corporal presence in the eucharist as a merely symbolical one. The Swiss church had also suspected him of Lutheranism; but the Zurich Consensus in 1549 at once dissipated this feeling, and altered his position with regard to the Lutherans. In that confession it was taught that the bread and wine are signs, with which (but not in, under, or through them) the true body and blood of Christ are communicated to the faithful by a peculiar operation of the Holy Ghost. Thus, although the belief in the actual presence of Christ in His human nature, and in His reception through the mouth, and consequently the literal interpretation of the words of the institution, were rejected; yet this doctrine was not actually so much at variance with the Lutheran as it appeared to be. For Calvin's contained the following propositions: 1. Though the bread and wine are mere signs, they are not empty signs, but pledges of the thing signified. 2. The body of Christ is really and effectually present in the supper, but not locally and in substance, since His body is in heaven, and no body possesses ubiquity. 3. The body of Christ is actually received, and not merely in imagination, at the time when the bread is taken: and this through the operation of faith, in a mystical and hyper-physical manner. These, says Matthes,' are the chief points of Calvin's doctrine of the eucharist, as gradually developed in his different works; and the question arose whether

1 Leben Melancthons, p. 341.