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 HUGUENOTS

530

HUGUENOTS

were very soon added. The primary organization with its successive developments may be reduced substantially to this: Wherever a sufficient number of the faithful were found, they were to organize in the form of a Church, i. e. appoint a consistory, call a minister, establish the regular celeliration of the sac- raments and the practice of discipline. A church provided with all the elements of organization was an cglise dressce; one which had only a part of these requisites was an iglise plantee. The former had one or more pastors, with elders and deacons, who com- posed the consistory. This consistory was in the first mstance elected by the common voice of the people; after that, it co-opted its own members; but these had to receive the approbation of the people. Pastors were elected by the provincial synod or the conference after an inquiry into their lives and beliefs, and a pro- fession of faith; imposition of hands followed. The people were notified of the election, and the newly elected pastor preached before the congregation on three consecutive Sundays; the silence of the people was taken as an expression of consent. The elders, elected by those members of the Church who were admitted to the Supper, were charged with the duty of watching over the flock, jointly with the pastor, andof paj-ing attention to all that concerned ecclesi- astical order and government. The deacons were elected like the elders; it was their office to administer, under the consistory, the alms collected for the poor, to visit the sick, those in prison, and so on.

A certain number of churches went to form a con- ference. The conferences assembled at least twice a year. Each church was represented by a pastor and an elder; the function of the conference was to settle such differences as might arise among church officers, and to provide generally for all that might be deemed necessary for the maintenance and the com- mon good of those within their jurisdiction. Over the conferences were the provincial synods, which were in like manner compo.sed of a pastor and one or two elders from each church chosen by the consistory, and met at least once a year. The number of these provincial synods in the whole of France was at times fifteen, at other times sixteen. Doctrines, discipline, schools, the appointment of pastors, erection and de- limitation of parishes fell within their jurisdiction. At the head of the hierarchy stood the national synod, which, in so far as possible, was to meet once a year. (.\s a matter of fact, there were only twenty-nine be- tween 1559 and 1660 — on an average, one every tlu-ee years and a half). It was made up of two ministers and two elders sent by each provincial synod, and, when fully attended, it'had (sixty or) sixty-four mem- bers. To the national synod it belonged to pronounce definitively upon all important matters, internal or external, disciplinary or political, which concerned religion.

The complement of these various institutions was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. In 1528 Lefevre d'Etaples had already completed a translation from the Vulgate, making use of Jean de R^ly's already existing translation, but suppressing the glosses. His translation was improved by going back to the original texts in the four editions which appeared successively before the year 1541. But the first really Huguenot version was that of Olivetan, a relation of Calvin's. It was called the " Bible de Sevrieres" — the Sevrifres Bible — from the locality where it was printed. For the protocanonical books of the Old Testament it goes to the Hebrew; for the deuterocanonical, it is in many places content with a revision of Lef^vre's text. Its New Testament is translated from the Greek. Calvin composed its preface. In 1540 there appeared an edition of it re- vised and corrected by the pastors of Geneva. Again there appeared at Geneva, in 1.545, another edition in which Calvin had a hand, k more thorough re-

vision marks the editions of 1553, 1561, and 1563, the last two with notes taken from Calvin's commentaries. Finally, Olivetan's text, more or less revised or re- newed by Martin and Osterwald, became the per- manent basis of the Bibles in use among French Protestants.

It was from Calvin, too, and from his book "La forme des pricres et des chants eccldsiastiques " (1.542), that the Huguenot liturgy was taken. Like Luther's, it embraces the suppression of the Mass, the idea of salvation by faith, the negation of merit in any works, even in Divine worship, the proscription of relics and of the intercession of saints; it attaches great importance to the preaching of God's word and the use of the vernacular onlj'. But the breach with Catholicism is much wider than in the case of Luther. Under pretext of returning to the earliest ecclesiastical usage, Calvin and the French Protestants who fol- lowed him retluced the whole liturg>' to three ele- ments: public prayers, preaching, and the adminis- tration of the sacraments. In the Divine service for Sunday prayers were cither recited or chanted. At the beginning there was the public confession and absolution, the chanting of the Ten Commandments or of psalms, then a prayer offered by the minister, followeil by the sermon and a long prayer for princes, for the Church and its pa.stors, for men in general, the poor, the sick, and so on. Besides these, there were special prayers for baptism, marriage, and the Supper, which last was under certain circumstances added to the Divine service.

History. — (1) Militant Period. — The history of French Protestantism may be divided into four well- defined periods: (1) .\ Militant Period, in which it is struggling for freedom (1559-98); (2) the Period of the Edict of Nantes (1598-1685); (3) the Period from the Revocation to the Revolution (1685-1800); (4) the Period from the Revolution to the Separation (lSOI-1905). The organization of their discipline and worship gave the Huguenots a new power of expan- sion. Little by little they penetrated into the ranks of the nobility. One of the principal families of the kingdom, the Coligny, allied to the Montmorency, furnished them their most distinguished recruits in d'.Andelot, .\dmiral Coligny, and Cardinal Odet de Chatillon. Soon the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Al- bret, daughter of Margaret of Navarre, professed Calvinism and introduced it into her dominions by force. Her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, the first prince of the blood, appeared at times to have gone over to the Huguenots with his brother the Prince de Cond(^, who, for his part, never wavered in his alle- giance to the new sect. Even the Parliament of Paris, which had so energetically carried on the struggle against the heresy, allowed itself to become tainted, many of its members embracing the new doctrine. It was necessary to deal severely with these; many were imprisoned, .Vntoine du Bourg among others. But at this point Henry II died, leaving the throne to a delicate child of sixteen. Nothing could have been more advantageous for the Huguenots. Just at that time they formed a numerous group in almost every district of France. Certain provinces, such as Nor- mandy, contained as many as 5000 of them; one day 6000 persons at the Pr('-aux-clercs, in Paris, sang the Psalms of Marot which the Huguenots had adopted; Basse-Guyenne, it was said, had seventy-six organized churches." Two years later, Bordeaux counted 7000 of the Reformed;" Rouen. 10,000; mention is made of 20,000 at Toulouse, and the Prince de Conde presented a list of 2050 churches — which, it is true, cannot be identified. The papal nuncio wTote to Rome that the kingdom was more than half Huguenot; this was assuredly an exaggeration, for the Venetian ambas- sador estimated the district contaminated with this error at not the one-tenth part of France; neverthe- less it is evident that the Huguenots could no longer