au Synode Provincial. S'il a prêché ou expliqué quelque doctrine hérétique, il sera promptement suspendu par le Consistoire de deux ou trois Ministres capables d'en juger, en attendant que le Synode Provincial en ait jugé définitivement. Quant aux causes de la déposition, elles ne seront point déclarées au peuple, si la nécessité ne le requiert, de laquelle le Consistoire jugera. Art. 24.-Les Anciens et Diacres sont le Senat de l'Église, auquel doivent présider les Ministres de la Parole. L'office des Anciens sera de faire assembler le peuple, de rapporter les scandales au Consistoire, et autres choses semblables, selon qu'il y aura dans chaque Église des formulaires couchez par écrit, selon la coûtume des lieux et des tems. Art 25.-L'office des Anciens, comme nous en usons à présent, n'est pas perpetuel. Quant aux Diacres, leur charge sera de recueillir et distribuer, par l'avis du Consistoire, les deniers des pauvres, des prisonniers et malades: de les visiter et d'aller par les maisons catéchiser; et au cas qu'il s'en trouve quelqu'un propre, et qui promette de se dédier et consacrer perpetuellement au service de Dieu et au Ministère, alors il pourra être élû par le Consistoire pour catéchiser en public, selon le formulaire reçû en l'Église, et cela pour les éprouver, sans qu'ils puissent administrer les Sacremens. Art. 26.-L'office des autres Diacres n'est pas de catéchiser en public; et leur charge n'est point perpetuelle: de laquelle toutefois ni eux ni leurs Anciens ne se pourront départir sans le congé de l'Église. Art. 27.-Dans les lieux où l'ordre de l'Église n'est point encore dressé, tant les Diacres que les Anciens seront élûs par la voix commune du peuple avec leur Pasteur: mais dans ceux où la Discipline seroit déja dressée, ce sera au Senat de l'Église avec leur Ministre de les élire; après quoi on leur lira les obligations de leur charge, et ils signeront la Confession de Foi arrêtée entre nous; puis ils seront présentés au peuple, et s'il y a opposition, la cause sera debatuë et vuidée au Consistoire, et s'ils ne se pouvoient accorder, elle sera renvoiée au Synode Provincial. Art. 28.--Les Diacres et les Anciens seront déposés pour les mêmes causes que les Ministres de la Parole, en leur qualité, et aiant été condannés par le Consistoire, s'ils en appellent, ils seront suspendus jusqu'à ce qu'il en soit ordonné par le Synode Provincial. Art. 29.-Les Ministres ni autres personnes de l'Église ne pourront faire imprimer aucun livre composé par eux, ou par autrui touchant la Religion, ni en publier sur d'autres matières, sans les communiquer à deux ou trois Ministres de la Parole, non suspects. : Art. 30.-Les hérétiques, les contentieux, les contempteurs de Dieu, les rebelles contre le Consistoire, les traitres contre l'Église item ceux qui sont atteints et convaincus de crime digne de punition corporelle, ceux qui apportent un grand scandale à toute l'Église, seront du tout excommuniés et retranchés non seulement des Sacremens, mais aussi de toute l'assemblée. Quant aux autres délinquans, ce sera à la prudence de l'Église de connoitre ceux qui doivent être admis à la Parole, après avoir été privés des Sacremens. Art. 31.-Ceux qui auront été excommuniés pour hérésie, ou mépris de Dieu, pour schisme, trahison contre l'Église, rebellion à icelle, et pour d'autres vices grandement scandaleux à toute l'Église; seront declarés au peuple pour excommuniés, avec les causes de leur excommunication. Quant à ceux qui auroient été excommuniés pour de plus legères causes, ce sera à la prudence de l'Eglise d'aviser si elle les devra manifester au peuple, ou non, jusqu'à ce qu'autrement en soit défini par le Concile général. Art. 32.--Ceux qui auront été excommuniés viendront au Consistoire demander d'être réconciliés à l'Église, laquelle jugera alors de leur pénitence; et s'ils ont été publiquement declarés excommuniés, ils feront aussi pénitence publique: s'ils n'ont été publiquement excommuniés, ils la feront seulement devant le Consistoire. Art. 33.-En tems de grande persécution, de guerre, peste, famine et autre générale affliction, quand on voudra élire des Ministres de la Parole, et quand il sera question d'entrer au Synode, on pourra dénoncer des prières publiques et extraordinaires, avec jeunes, toutefois sans scrupule, ou superstition. Arts. 34-38.-Les mariages. . . . Art. 39.-Aucune Église ne pourra faire des choses de grande consequence où l'interêt et le dommage des autres Églises pourront se rencontrer, sans l'avis du Synode Provincial, s'il est possible de l'assembler: et si l'affaire pressoit, elle convoquera et aura l'avis et le consentement des autres Églises de la Province, du moins par des lettres. Art. 40.-Ces articles qui sont contenus ici touchant la Discipline ne sont tellement arrêtez entre nous que si l'utilité de l'Église le requiert, ils ne puissent être changés. Mais il ne sera pas au pouvoir d'un particulier de le faire, sans l'avis et le .consentement du Concile général. No. 330. The Report of the Venetian Ambassador in France, 1561. Unless it otherwise pleases the Almighty, religious affairs will soon be in an evil case in France, because there is not one single province uncontaminated. Indeed in some provinces, such as Normandy, almost the whole of Brittany, Touraine, Poitou, Gascony, and a great part of Languedoc, of Dauphiny, and of Provence, comprising three-fourths of the kingdom, congregations and meetings, which they call assemblies, are held; and in these assemblies they read and preach, according to the rites and usages of Geneva, without any respect either for the ministers of the king or the commandments of the king himself. This contagion has penetrated so deeply that it affects every class of persons, and, what appears more strange, even the ecclesiastical body itself. I do not mean only priests, friars, and nuns, for there are but few monasteries that are not corrupted, but even bishops and many of the principal prelates, who hitherto had not shown any such disposition; and it is only on account of the rigorous execution of the law that other persons besides the populace have not disclosed themselves, because they have restrained themselves for the time being, from fear of the loss of their property and lives. But your Serenity1 must learn that while the people and the populace show fervent devotion by frequenting the churches and observing the Catholic rites, all other classes are supposed to be disaffected, and the nobility perhaps more than any other class, and, particularly, persons of forty years of age and under. If these disaffected individuals continue to attend Mass and the Divine Offices, and externally to practise Catholic rites, they do so for show and from fear; because when they either are, or believe themselves to be, unobserved, they avoid and even fly from the Mass above all things, and also from the churches as far as they are able, and more so since it became known that by imprisonment, chastisement, and burnings, no remedy was found. It has now been determined not to proceed against any disaffected The Doge of Venice. 2 The wars with the Empire were over by, 3 April 1559, the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. They had nothing to do, and were often in debt. persons, unless they venture to preach, persuade, and to take part publicly in congregations and assemblies. All other such persons are allowed to live, and some have been set at liberty, and released from the prisons of Paris and of other parts of the kingdom. A great number of these last have still remained in the kingdom, preaching and speaking publicly, and boasting that they have gained their cause against the Papists, as they delight to style their adversaries; so that, now, every one of them is assured against the fear of being questioned; and there exists thus a silent truce, because whilst formerly all suspected persons had to quit the kingdom, and to retire some to Geneva, some to Germany, and some to England, now they not only do not leave the country, but a large number of those who had already emigrated have returned. It was told me, whilst passing through Geneva on my way to Italy, that, after the death of the king, a great number of gentlemen who had fled thither after the conspiracy of Amboise, had come back to France, and, in particular, M. de Mombrun, who was the author of the late disturbances in Provence and in Dauphiny, and who had been burnt in effigy; besides these, more than fifty others, who are called ministers, were summoned from various parts of France to travel, and teach and preach the 'Word', for thus they term the Gospels, and their own doctrine. Your Serenity will hardly believe the influence and the great power which the principal minister of Geneva, by name Calvin, a Frenchman, and a native of Picardy, possesses in this kingdom; he is a man of extraordinary authority, who by his mode of life, his doctrines, and his writings, rises superior to all the rest; and it is almost impossible to believe the enormous sums of money which are secretly sent to him from France to maintain his power. It is sufficient to add that if God does not interfere, there is great and imminent danger that one of two things will happen in this kingdom: either that the truce, which is desired and sought publicly, will end by the heretics having churches wherein they can preach, read, and perform their rites, according to their doctrine, without hindrance, and in like manner as they obtained churches by command of the late king,2 given at Fontainebleau, at the end of August, in compliance with a petition presented to him by the Admiral; or, else, that we shall see an obedience to the To remove the Guises, 15 March 1560. 2 Francis II, +5 Dec. 1560. 3 Edict of Fontainebleau, 26 Aug. 1560. Pope and to the Catholic rites enforced, and shall have resort to violence and imbrue our hands in noble blood. For these reasons I foresee a manifest and certain division in the kingdom, and civil war as a consequence; and this will be the cause of the ruin both of the kingdom and of religion, because upon a change in religion a change in the State necessarily follows. § 3. THE NETHERLANDS XXI THE DUTCH REFORMED, 1559-62 On 26 October 1555 Charles V resigned the crown of the Netherlands to his son Philip II of Spain, 1556-+98. The Emperor left him his debts, his policy of putting down heresy by Edicts and Inquisition, and his scheme for cementing the ecclesiastical unity of the Seventeen Provinces by an enlarged and reconstituted hierarchy everything, in fact, but his personal popularity. In 1559 [No. 331] the Venetian Ambassador wrote that Philip was a foreigner to the Netherlands (Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1558-80, No. 274). He felt himself so: and at last the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, 3 April, set him free to sail, 26 Aug., for Spain. He left the government of the Netherlands in the hands of a Regent and a Minister-his half-sister Margaret Duchess of Parma, a native-born princess, 1521-+86, and the Burgundian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, 1517-+86, Bishop of Arras 1538-61. Both were regarded as the representatives of a foreign Sovereign, and both were dependent wholly on his favour. Before his departure, Philip, 24 May, had secured the consent of Paul IV to [No. 332] the increase of Bishoprics (ibid. No. 75): and by a Bull of 18 Aug. (Raynaldus, Ann. Eccl. xv. 40 sqq.) the hierarchy was raised from four to seventeen sees, with Granvelle at its head (Calendar, No. 244) as Cardinal-Archbishop of Mechlin, 1561. There was much to be said for this project as designed to replace a chaos of four dioceses-Utrecht, Arras, Tournai, and Cambrai-which were subject to the foreign metropolitans of Köln and Rheims, by a national hierarchy. But it was resented, and so was the repression. Discontent was of slow growth: but the 1 These were, in 1543, (a) four duchies: Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Gelderland; (b) seven counties: Flanders, Artois, Hainault, Namur, Zeeland, Holland, Zütphen; (c) five lordships: Friesland, Groningen, Overyssel, Utrecht, Mechlin; and (d) one marquisate: Antwerp. 2 These were (a) under Cambrai (Abp.), Arras, Tournai, St. Omer, Namur; (b) under Mechlin (Abp.), Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Hertogenbosch, Roermond; under (c) Utrecht (Abp.), Haarlem, Deventer, Leeuwarden, and Middelburg. |