ZEAL. (Various instances of false.)

Francis Junius, or Du Jon, professor of divinity at Leyden, was born at Bourges, the first of May, 1545. William du Jon, his grandfather, lord of Boffardiniere, near Issoudun, was ennobled for the good services he had done in the expedition into Navarre, when endeavours were used to restore John d’Albret, unjustly deprived of bis kingdom by Ferdinand of Arragon. He had also been a servant to the king. He left three sons, the last whereof, called Denys, studied the civil law, and took his degrees at Toulouse. He performed his studies but ill, for as he had a great spirit, he was always engaged in the quarrels of the scholars. In a word, he was a great duellist. He obtained the office of the king’s counsellor at Bourges, as a reward of a bold action he had done.

He found himself exposed to many persecutions for being suspected of Lutheranism. The superior of the Franciscans of Issoudun preached so impudently against Margaret, queen of Navarre, duchess of Berry, and sister to Francis I, as to say, that because she was a Lutheran, she deserved to be sewed up in a sack, and to be thrown into the sea. The magistrates of the place advised him not to be wanting in the respect that was due to that princess, but he laughed at their advice, and went on. preaching in the same strain. Informations were made against him, and sent to the king. The king being resolved to punish him with the same punishment to which he had adjudged the princess, ordered the monk should be brought to him. The queen of Navarre interceding for him, obtained that the punishment should be moderated. The difficulty was to seize that monk, who

had the mob on his side, so that, the magistrates of Issoudun durst not undertake the execution of his majesty’s orders. Denys du Jon, being returned from the schools where he had fought so many duels, declared, that if his majesty would give him a commission to take the monk, he would punctually execute it. This commission being dispatched for him, he put himself at the head of the archers, and in spite of the populace, he took the preacher out of the cloister, who was sent to the gallies for two years.

Du Jon, by this action, ingratiated himself with Francis I and the duchess of Berry; but he incurred the hatred of the people, and of the Franciscans, and found himself exposed to many calumnies and threatenings, and involved in processes which ended at last in a cruel massacre, committed on his person.. He was accused of Lutheranism, and his maid was suborned to attest that he did not observe fasting days. He betook himself to flight, being unwilling to trust himself with such passionate people; they seized on his estate, and the queen of Navarre was obliged to supply him wherewithal to subsist for nearly a year. At last, by the king’s authority, the accusations were brought to nothing, and then du Jon obtained a place of counsellor and colonel conferred on him by the king, besides other honorary benefits which he received from the queen, his sister, and the duke of Berry. Hear how he was killed. On Corpus Christi day, the Catholics of Issoudun, without any regard to the treaty of peace which had been just concluded, committed a thousand violences against the reformed. The king dispatched a commission to Denys du Jon, to inquire into that insurrection, and to punish the authors of it.: Du Jon repaired to Issoudun, accompanied only by three archers; he dispersed the rest in several places, before he entered the town, it being necessary to use prudence in so nice an affair. His precautions did him no service;

it was conjectured upon what account he came; the people seized on the gates, and besieged the house of the commissioner. They broke into it, killed du Jon, threw him out at the window, dragged him along the streets, exposed him to the dogs, and publicly forbad any to bury him. Taken from the Life of Franciscus Junius, page 14. ²⁰ The king’s council, out of indignation against this insolence, ordered that the walls of Issoudun should be demolished, but Cipierre, and some other lords, got the decree changed, especially because the murdered commissioner had been suspected of Lutheranism above twenty four years. The widow of the deceased desiring to prosecute the murderers, got the hatred of a great many people, and fruitlessly spent her estate.

I need not put any body in mind of the ill effects of a religious zeal. Those who are possessed with it justify a murder, and disapprove the conduct of a woman, who desires that those who have murdered her husband should be punished. But I desire my readers to consider well one thing, that religion, which is looked upon all over the world as the strongest support of the supreme authority, and which would be actually so, if it were well understood and practised, is commonly that which most enervates that same authority. There was nothing more just than the decree of Francis I against the preacher of Issoudun; a man who had the impudence to treat the king’s sister so basely in the pulpit. And yet not one magistrate durst execute the king’s orders against this mutineer, and when a gentleman has the courage to execute them, be exposes himself to a thousand persecutions, and becomes so odious, that his murderers are openly protected. The queen of Navarre was the first who advised this gentleman to leave his country, since the execution of his prince’s orders would expose him to the hatred of the bigots. An

evident proof that the court did not think itself strong enough to protect its good servants persecuted by churchmen. It is commonly said that the ministry of the gospel “est ipsis angelis tremendum,—is formidable to the angels;” we may addy “et ipsis quoque regibus’”—And to kings also.” Read the history of the Romish church, and you will find that the greatest princes have had more reason to fear the passions raised by the zealots, than the arms of the infidels; thus, that very thing which ought to be the support of the state, is very often the greatest obstacle that sovereigns meet with in the execution of their orders.

Art. Junius.

EDMUND Aubertin, in Latin, Edmundus Albertinus, minister of the church of Paris in the seventeenth century, was a very learned man. He was born at Chalons on Marne, in the year 1595. He was received into the ministry at the synod of Charenton, in the year 1618, and appointed to the church of Chartres, from whence he was transferred to Paris in the year 1631. He wrote, properly speaking, only one book, but acquired more reputation by that one, than other learned men have done by printing an hundred volumes. The subject of this work is the controversy of the Eucharist. It appeared in the year 1633, under the title of the “Eucharist of the Ancient Church.” The agents of the clergy of France complained of M. Aubertin before the king’s council, and obtained a warrant to take him into custody, for having styled himself pastor of the reformed church of Paris. This process was dropped; the time was not yet come to push this sort of matters too far. Whether the merit of the piece, without the assistance of this accident, made it sell so well, or that people concluded it must be excellently well done, because the clergy chose to attack it by way of the secular arm, it is

certain that the author had reason to be contented with the success of his book, which he revised, enlarged, and completed, with so much application, that he seems to have made it his whole business and study.

Aubertin died at Paris, the fifth of April, 1652, aged fifty-seven years. He was exposed in his agonies to the insults of the curate of St Sulpice, and in spite of his drowsiness, which was one of the principal symptoms of his distemper, he had his mind free enough to declare when that missionary questioned him, that he died in a full belief of the truths he had always professed. With great indecency the curate came at nine o’clock in the night to the sick man’s door, with the bailiff of St Germains. The mob to the number of forty, followed him with arms; he knocked at the door and pretended to be the physician, in order to gain admission. As soon as the door was opened, the whole troop rushed violently into the house, affirming that the sick person desired to make his abjuration before a priest, but that he was hindered, which was the reason of their coming to deliver his conscience from such slavery. The eldest son of the agonizing minister defended the stairs as well as he could; but at last, to hinder the mob from breaking open the chamber door, it was agreed to let the curate and bailiff only, come into the sick person’s chamber. The cries and shoutings of their guard, recovered M. Aubertin a little out of his lethargic state, so that he declared very distinctly his perseverance in the reformed religion. The curate and bailiff went out, and had much ado to make the mob retire, who in a little time after returned again, crying out that the curate and bailiff had been forced out of the bouse; and would have broken and plundered it, if two persons of note had not entreated them to desist. “The whole neighbourhood,” says David Blondel, “were witnesses of this extreme violence which exposed to the insults of his enemies the

yet breathing remains of the pious man. He who unhappily made use of this melancholy occasion, was John James Ollerius, a man of too hot and tumultuous a zeal, curate of the church of St Sulpice, and chief of the Society de Propaganda Fide, &c.” Can any one think of this without remembering that pathetic expostulation of Lucretius?

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum?
What can escape religion’s hot-brain’d zeal?
Tristius haud illo monstrum nec saevior ulla
Pestis et ira Deum stygiis sese extulit undis.

Virgil. Æn. lib. 3. ver. 214.

Monsters more fierce, offended heav’n ne’er sent
From hell's abyss, for human punishment. Dryden.

It will not suffer men even to die quietly. After having tormented them all their life-time, it lays snares for them even in the height of a distemper, which robs them of the use of their reason. It takes advantage of those moments when the soul is as sick as the body, and where

Claudicat iugenium, delirat linguaque mensque.

Lucret. lib. iii. ver. 454.

Reason grows weak, delirious thought and speech.

Art. Aubertin.

The celebrated Diana of Poitiers was a mortal enemy to the Protestants. Beza ascribes the cruel persecution which they suffered under the reign of Henry II, to the counsels of three persons, viz. the cardinal de Lorain, the duchess of Valentinois, and the marshal de St Andre. “The cardinal,” says he, Histoire Ecclésiastique, lib. ii, pag. 68. ²¹ “had the king’s conscience at his disposal, the duchess was in his possession of his body not without suspicion

of witchcraft, since she had lived in a very bad’ reputation, and had nothing in her that might reasonably (if there is reason in such passions) win or preserve the heart of such a prince. Those three persons who continually endeavoured to make him believe these two things, that the Protestants were enemies to the kingly power and great lovers of confusion, and that the right way of making amends for all the vices in which they themselves indulged him, was to exterminate the enemies of the Romish religion, did so work upon him, that from the very beginning of bis reign he made it his business to persecute and destroy the churches, as bis late father had done before him.” Here is a passage out of Brantome: “But above all she was a very good Catholic, and hated the Protestants very much, which is the reason why they hated and slandered her.” Brantome, Eloge de Henri II. ²² Varillas’s words are still more remarkable: “She declared in the principal articles of her will, which she made when she was most in favour, and which she did not revoke when she died, ten or twelve years after, that she was so zealous for the Catholic faith, that if the duchesses d’Aumale and de Bouillon, her daughters, should forsake it upon any pretence whatsoever, and embrace any of the new sects, she deprived them of her estate, and gave it to the hospitals of the places where the several parts of it lay. If one of her daughters only renounced the Catholic faith, she gave her share to her sister; and if her relations were not careful to execute her last will, she applied herself to the parliament, and entreated them by the good offices she had formerly done them with Henry II, to supply the fault of her relations.” Histoire de Henri II, lib. i, pag. 36, 37. ²³ This historian observes that this article of her will was not executed; the duchess of Bouillon made an open profession of the reformed religion, and yet had an equal share of her mother’s estate with the duchess d’Aumale. I shall set down another passage which clearly shows how much the duchess hated the Protestants. “She durst not explain her thoughts to d’Andelot; for though she made no scruple for the space of twenty years to live an unchaste life with her king, contrary to the laws of the gospel, yet she had such a nice conscience that she would not so much as speak to those who were suspected of heresy.” What extravagance! I desire the readers to make their reflections upon this odd zeal, which is so common.—Art. Poitiers.

John Quintin, professor of the canon law at Paris, in the XVIth century, was a native of Autun. He neither wanted learning nor genius. At first he liked the new opinions, as they were called, and declared his mind in an oration so plainly about it, that he was forced to remove from Poitiers; but his faith, which was only temporary, was not proof against a long persecution; he quickly accepted of a good benefice, that was given him by the order of the knights of Malta; and when he returned from that island, where he had been a domestic to the Great Master, he was made professor of the canon law at Paris, in the year 1536. That which made him most spoken of, was the harangue he made in the name of the clergy, during the assembly of the states at Orleans in December, 1560. He demanded that those of the new religion should be proceeded against with the utmost severity, which would be more surprising, if it had not been a thing practised for many ages; but though that bloody spirit had prevailed never so long, many could not forbear wondering that a clergyman should have taken upon himself to solicit such a thing.

Having demanded that all the inhabitants of the kingdom should be obliged to be Catholics; that the Non-Christians, that is, the Heretics, should not be “admitted into the conversation and company of the Christian subjects;” and that, “for the time to come, all Heretics should be forbidden to deal in any commodity (whether it were books or any other thing)” added these dreadful words: “and therefore our request is just, reasonable, holy, and catholic, and grounded upon the express command of God: who enjoins you, sire, to grant it us, repeating the said command in several places and at several times. He speaks of the idolaters and Gentiles, strangers to the law; Heretics among Christians are accounted to be such. These are the words of the said law of God: ‘ be sure not to contract any friendship, confederacy, or marriage with them; do not suffer them to inhabit the country; take no pity on them; beat them, destroy them to a man:' and then follows the reason of that command: ‘ lest they should make thee sin against me if thou believe their opinions, which will be an offence and a scandal that will raise my fury against thee, and soon after I shall destroy thee.' Sire, and you, madam, avoid those horrible and dreadful threatenings, for the salvation of your souls, and the preservation of your sceptre. This is, sire, what your clergy of France propose, and represent to your majesty, in all simplicity, obedience, humility, and submission, concerning the honour and service of God in your kingdom, and for the extirpation and abolition of what is contrary to it, namely of sects and heresies. The whole matter is more fully and particularly discussed and handled in their memorial, to which we expect an answer.” Quintin’s speech is to be found entire in the history of president la Place. It is plain that, “the most humble and devout orators of the clergy” were for shedding blood, if it were necessary, since they reminded the king of Moses’s

order and threatenings; besides Quintin had already said in express words, that his ‘‘majesty being strong, and armed with the sword,” ought to oppose the Heretics, that “in order to it, and for no other end, God had put the sword into his hands, to protect the good, and punish the wicked; and that none can deny that a Heretic is capitally wicked, and consequently ought to be punished capitally, and be subject to the sword of the magistrate.”

The French clergy acted more artfully one hundred and twenty-five years after; for in a speech they made to the king, some months before the revocation of the edict of Nantes, they declared that they did not desire his majesty should make use of his power for the extirpation of the Heretics. This artifice, after all, is no very deep one, and I do not know whether the too ingenuous plainness of the year 1560, ought not to be preferred to the dissimulation of the year 1685. Read these words of M. Claude. “Whilst the thing was only preparing, the true authors of the persecution did not conceal themselves, but used their endeavours to make the king appear in it; when things came to the last extremity, and to open force, they concealed themselves as much as they could and made the king appear alone; there was nothing to be heard then, but this sort of discourses; “the king will have it so, the king is resolved upon it, the king goes farther than the clergy desire.” By these two means they have been so cunning as to ascribe to themselves the least violent part of the persecution, and to charge the king with the most odious part.

Quintin did not foresee that the chief men of the Protestants would show a great deal of vigour in that assembly, much less that he would be extremely affected with the animadversions that should be made upon his harangue. Had he foreseen those things, he would without doubt have kept at Paris, and had rather chosen to explain some decretals to his scholars,

than to give lessons of cruelty to the king, his master, in the presence of the three estates of the kingdom. Admiral Chatillon complained so openly of Quintin’s speech, that the king and the queen-mother sent for that orator, to call him to an account for what he had said. His answer was, that he had only followed the orders and memoirs of the body whose spokesman he had been. The Protestants were not satisfied with that answer; Commentaires de l’état de la Relig. et Republ. liv. iv, folio, 152. Thuanus, lib. xxvii. ²⁴ he was obliged to declare, before the assembly of the estates that he did not design to reflect on Admiral Chatillon: but he was much more vexed at the railleries and censures that were dispersed against his declamation. He could not bear that mortification, and his affliction was so great, that he fell sick, and died of grief about the beginning of April, 1561.—Art. Quintin.