The Reformation in France and the Catholic Response
Part 3: the Radical Reformation
John Calvin
Henri II wasn't the only Frenchman who sought to chart a new course in religious matters in the wake of the Reformation. A group of Parisian scholars were just as insulted by the lack of results of the Council of Avignon as Henri was, but unlike the King they had far less power to influence the Pope: the events immediately after the COuncil of Avignon (and the Council of Munchen, the Second Council dealing with the Reformation, which occurred in 1532 and was completely dominated by Counter Reformationist elements) closed the door to the Church for the Reformists.
Among the future Reformists, the greatest theological mind among them was the young Jean Cauvin (or John Calvin). Only 15 when he joined the order of the Carmelites, he already had a reputation as a great theologian and missionary by the age of 18, when was summoned to the Council of Avignon. Immediately after the Council, Cauvin moved to the Cathar country, where he acted as a missionary for three years, converting the fortress-village of Montsegur. But his faith was troubled, even then. His letters to his companion, Francois de Chacrise, show how much Cauvin's missionary work worried him even before his conversion.
To my dearest Francois said:
Are we doing the right thing? We've been taught, we've been raised, to believe that we were doing God's work by converting the heathens to the Universal Church. But my time in the Cathar country has sowed doubt in my mind. They live together, unbound to a hierarchy. They may not kill, they may not covet one another's property or engage in corrupt activities. When I was a student in Parma, I saw murder, I saw avarice, I saw sin. I saw sin everywhere. And yet we don't send missionaries to Italy. We only see these paragons of virtue as heretics, and we must convert them to our 'superior' ways. Is this my true purpose?
It is apparent that shortly after this, Jean Cauvin started one of his first great theological works: a history, called
The Practices of the Cathar. Cauvin's history, which includes the organization of a Catharist congregation, the beliefs and history of the Cathars, Catharism's origins in Bulgarian and Armenian heretical sects (as well as Gnosticism), and the history of the Cathars since the Albigensian Crusade of the 1200s.
The Practices of the Cathar was a wonderful historical text, still used as a source today. It was also on the very edge of what was considered acceptable by Cauvin's contemporaries. The text not only treated the Cathars with a respect they hadn't been given in over 300 years, it lionized them. The book, despite its borderline heretical nature, was widely read in the theological universities of France and Germany, and became the template for a series of later Jesuit works on other heretic sects.
Cauvin's move towards heresy was completed in 1535. On a travel from Cathar country to Paris, Cauvin was struck with a revelation. He yelled to his carriage driver to stop, he got out and prayed by the side of the road, near Dijon (the point is now a point of pilgrimage for Neocatharists). When he got back into the carriage and was asked by his fellow passengers what the fuss was about, he immediately started 'The Carriage Sermon', the first neoCatharist gospel. In it, Christ was a man who was moved by God to convert the godless Romans, but also to preach to the wrongheaded though right-hearted Jews. Cauvin argued that knowledge of Christ carried with it the moral obligation to reenact his missionary work, both for the Godless and for those who had merely lost their way. During the sermon Cauvin converted 3 of his four fellow passengers, and he moved to convert,
en masse, the members of the University of Paris.
He was largely successful. His view of Christian dogma spoke to the past 40 years of scholarly thinking in Paris--that Christ was a man, that Christians had a moral obligation to enact the beliefs of Christ etc. But Cauvin went a step farther, incorporating both the criticism and popularity of monastic orders in France. He saw the Cathar's most major problem being their early lack of priests, springing of course from their laudable want for equality between members of the congregation. However this made converting unbelievers more difficult. But Cauvin believed that the moral obligation to reenact the life of Christ would supersede the need for priests. Instead, all young men would become missionaries for some part in their life. Upon finishing their missionary work they could continue the road of their faith and become monks, although Cauvin meant a different kind of monk than the Catholic sort. Neocatharist monks would remain in society, preaching both to unbelievers but also to those who lost their way.
Neocatharism exploded in the Paris after 1535. Within a decade, Cauvin's sect had converted more than 30,000 Frenchmen and Cauvin himself had traveled from France to Scotland and Germany, spreading his version of the gospel, although both Henri II and Louis XII let him stay in France (Henri because it allowed him to pressure the Church more, Louis because he saw Neocatharism as a weapon to inflict on his enemies).
By 1700, Hugenots numbered in the hundreds of thousands, remaining mostly in the small towns, where the Urban Monks (as Neocatharist monks came to be called) provided a sense of community
The Universite de la Pon and the Jesuits
Although Henri II welcomed, to some degree, the Neocatharist heresy, he also saw it (and its huge popularity in the Universities of Paris and Toulouse) that the old, Scholastic method of teaching priests was defunct. For one, the institutions of the Universities clearly led to an academic class prone to heresy. But secondly, both Paris and Toulouse were too far away from Avignon to provide a concentrated group of Priests. In order to give the Avignon Pope the number of priests needed in these hard times, Henri felt that there needed to be a school closer to Avignon. Thus was born the largest prestige project of Henri's career--the University de la Pon.
Auvergne, as I said, was a highly fractured province before it was integrated into the Kingdom proper by Francois I. But in many ways, it remained just as fractured after its integration. Different baronies in Auvergne supported different monastic sects, and this ended with Auvergne becoming the province in the Commonwealth with the highest monastic diversity. This was a blessing and a curse. It allowed the people of the county of Auvergne a huge amount of choice, but after 1535 the fractured province became highly susceptible to Calvinism. Henri aimed to kill four birds with one stone--by creating a new kind of school in Auvergne (The Universite de la Pon was the first modern seminary), he was continuing his reformist path, giving the Papacy more trained priests (who were trained in a French tradition), unifying a fractured province within his rule, and fighting heresy within his kingdom.
The Auvergnian Seminary. Note that I don't know why the modifiers went to Paris. I should fix this because that's a lot of taxes. Also the Seminary modifier, as well as the other universities, pump out low level advisers (or medium amounts of prestige/tech) every couple of years)
And the Universite de la Pon (meaning Bridge University, both because it was placed by a bridge which crossed the Rhone and because it was a symbolic 'bridge' between the monastic orders of Auvergne) did all of that and more. The liberal education given by the University (students had to pick a focus in History, Doctrine [ie pure theology] or Oratory) made it one of the most modern Universities in Europe outside of Paris until the Kunsthochschule Kassel [University of the Fine Arts at Kassel] was opened in the 18th century.
But the mixing of monastic branches did far more than merely bring them together--it created something new. The Spanish, Counter-Reformationary faction of French monks were, for the first time, forced to collaborate with Reformist monks (and vice versa). Together, each side saw the necessity for the other--the Church didn't need Reform alone, it also needed zealous followers who were willing to travel to the farthest reaches of the Earth.
The creation of the Society of Jesus in 1559
The Order of Jesus (or the Jesuits) was formed a generation after the creation of the Universite de la Pon. An evangelist monastic order, the Jesuits committed to converting not only the heathens of far away lands (Jesuits quickly became the largest religious order in the New World after their formation), but the intellectuals of the home front. Jesuits would go to the Far East, the New World, Africa and India, but would also remain a huge presence in France itself, replacing the Inquisition as the main enforcers of the Word. France remained the center of Jesuit activity for decades to come, and it was a Jesuit who later crowned Louis XII 'most Christian King'.
Jesuit missionaries in China
Jesuit missionaries in New France