808 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
tions appealed to him for preachers ; princes and noblemen for decisive counsel in political complications ; those in doubt for instruction ; the persecuted for protection ; the martyrs for exhortation and encouragement in cheerful suffering and dying. And as the eye of a father watches over his children, Calvin watched with untiring care of love over all these relations in their manifold ramifications, and sought to be the same to the great community of his brethren in France what he was to the little Republic at home.''^
Roman Catholic writers have made Calvin responsible for the civil wars in France, as they have made Luther responsible for the Peasants' War and the Thirty Years' War. But the Reformers preached reformation by the word and the spirit, not revolution by the sword. The chief cause of the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the intolerance of the papacy. Bossuet charges Calvin with complicity in the conspiracy of Amboise, which was a political coup d'etat to check the power of the Guises (1560). Calvin was indeed informed of the plot, but warned against it, first privately, then publicly, and predicted its disastrous failure. He constantly upheld the principle of obedience to the rightful magistrate, and opposed violent measures. "The first drop of blood," he said, "which we shed will cause streams of blood to flow. Let us rather a hundred times perish than bring such disgrace upon the name of Christianity and the cause of the gospel." ^ Afterwards when a war in self-defence was inevitable, he reluctantly gave his consent, but protested against all excesses.^
Calvin did not live to weep over the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, nor to rejoice over the Edict of Nantes; but his spirit accompanied "the Church of the
1 Stiihelin, I. 507.
2 See Letters in Bonnet, II. 382-391 ; his letter to BuUinger, May 11, 1560; Basnage, Hist, de la Beligion des Egl. ref. II. 192-200 ; Henry, III. 545 sqq. ; Dyer, 478 sqq.; Stiihelin, L 615-619.
' Stahelin, I. 626 sqq.
§ 162. Calvin's influence upon the churches. 809
Desert," whose motto was the burning bush (Ex. 3:2); and every Huguenot who left France for the &*uke of his faith, carried to his new home in Switzerland, or Brandenburg, or Holland, or England, or America, a profound reverence for the name of John Calvin.
, Calvin and the Waldenses.
The Waldenses are the onl}- mediaeval sect which survives to this day, because they progressed with the Reformation and adhered to the Bible as their rule of faith.^ They sent a deputation of two of their pastors, in 1530, to (Ecolampadius at Basel, Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, and Berthold Haller at Bern, for information concerning the principles of the Reformation, and made common cause with the Protestants.^ They were distinguished for industry, virtue, and simple, practical piety, but their heresy attracted the attention of the authorities. They were cited before the Parliament at Aix, and the heads of their families were condemned to death in November, 1540. The execution of the atrocious sentence was delayed till the king's wishes should be ascertained. In February, 1541, Francis granted them pardon for the past, but required them to recant within three months. They adhered to their faith. On the 28th of April, 1545, a fiendish scheme of butchery — under the direction of Baron d'Oppede, military governor of Provence, and Cardinal Tournon, the bigoted and bloodthirsty archbishop of Lyons — was carried out against these innocent people. Their chief towns of Merindol and Cabrieres, together with twenty-eight villages,
1 The cognate Bohemian Brethren continued under a new name in the Moravian Brotherhood (Unitas Fratriim, Brndergevieinde).
2 Creeds of Christendom, I. 565 sqq. See also a report of conversations which Calvin had at Strassburg with Matthias Czervenka, a Bohemian, about the Bohemian Brethren in Gindely, Quellen ztir Gesch. der bohmischen Briider, Wien, 1859, p. 68, quoted in Annal. Calv. XXI. 260 sqq. Calvin objected to the Waldenses at that time, that they claimed merit and did not leave room for the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.