Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/114

Rh The death of Louisa gave a swift impetus to the movement of reform.

In 1533, Robert Estienne printed his Latin Bible. In the same year, a cooper's son from Noyon, a certain young Chauvin (or Calvinus, as he latinized the name), a Picard bourgeois, strong, hard, dogmatic, litigious, had composed a book, as yet only known in manuscript, the Institutio Christianæ Religionis. It was audaciously dedicated to the King, and bore the motto: Non veni mittere pacem, sed gladium. The Rector of the Sorbonne preached a sermon by this young Calvin to his scandalised magisters. What! was the heresy infesting their very stronghold? The imprudent Rector had to fly for his life to Switzerland. A warrant was issued against him: another against the obnoxious Calvin, who, less agile, was run to earth at Angoulême. Now let the Lutherans and Zwinglians behold to what ends led their monstrous opinions! Parliament, Sorbonne, all good Catholics, prepared for the auto and the triumph—when, at the last moment, their prey was wrested from them: Margaret, the pernicious Queen of Navarre, threw herself down before the King and entreated his pardon for Calvin. It was granted.

She was verily the head and front of the offending, this light-minded, mystical, learned young Queen of Navarre. At all costs, she must be warned, crushed, superseded. A little before this she had published at Alençon a poem, weak, mystical, inflated with a vague ideality: Le Myrouer de l'Âme Pecheresse. It would be hard, in this mist of nebulous piety, to name precisely any error of commission. But the Sorbonne, supremely irritated against Margaret, discovered therein divers heresies of omission. There