containing the proceedings of its annual conventions from 1748 to 1821, carefully transcribed, translated and annotated, with indexes of subjects, of ministers, of lay delegates' names, and of place-names.

Professor Oscar Kuhns, of Wesleyan University, has nearly finished a work on the Pennsylvania Germans, in which he will trace the history of their life in Germany, their emigration, their settlement in Pennsylvania and their religious and social development in subsequent times.

The July number of the Publications of the Southern History Association has for its most important contents an article on Christopher Gadsden, by Mr. E. I. Renick, and one by Mr. B. W. Arnold on Virginia women in the Civil War. The Society intends to publish a much-needed index to Bishop Meade's Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. Subscriptions may be sent to the secretary, Dr. Colyer Meriwether, P. O. Box 665, Washington, D. C.

The July number of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography contains interesting extracts from the Carter papers, from the Journal of John Barnwell, from the letters of William Fitzhugh, and from the letters of Lafayette to Governor Jefferson in 1781.

In the Lower Norfolk County Virginia Antiquary, No. 2, Part 3, the most important new matter relates to church affairs in 1649 and 1650. Matter relating to the burning of Norfolk by the Americans in 1776 and to Grace Sherwood the witch is reprinted from other places. There is a list of harp and piano owners in Portsmouth (Va.) in 1855, taken from the report of a commissioner of revenue.

Professor Charles Lee Raper has published in book-form a series of articles on The Church and Private Schools of North Carolina (Greensborough, J. J. Stone, pp. 245), which he has been contributing to a local college paper.

A serious effort is being made to revive interest in the Alabama Historical Society. Its officers intend to issue, as soon as possible, the first volume of its Transactions, embracing papers read at various times since its organization in 1850, and before long a second volume containing the papers read at the annual meeting of June 21, 1898. Appeal is made for subscriptions and other aid. The secretary, Mr. T. M. Owen, announces a history of Jefferson County, Alabama, 1814-1898, to be published by him at Carrollton.

The July number of the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association contains an interesting sketch of the life of Judge O. M. Roberts, late president of the society, an article on the old fort at Anahuac, by Adele B. Looscan, and the beginning of a sketch of the judicial history of Texas, by Hon. John C. Townes. The books and manuscripts on Texan history collected by Judge Roberts have been bequeathed by him to the State University.

The fortunes of the Scioto Company and of the Société des VingtQuatre are studied, from the papers of M. du Val d'Éprémesnil, in the Revue de Paris of May 15, by M. Henri Carré.

The Annals of Iowa, in its double number for April-July, contains a history of Fort Des Moines, a series of reminiscences of Gen. James Parrott, and an account of the battle of Pleasant Hill by three Iowa officers. The General Assembly has made an appropriation for the purchase of a suitable site for an imposing historical building for the

state.

Col. Henry Inman, U. S. A., whose Old Santa Fé Trail was recently reviewed in this journal, has brought out another book of a similar character on The Great Salt Lake Trail (Macmillan), in which he has been assisted by Col. W. F. Cody, better known as "Buffalo Bill.”

The government printing office has issued a descriptive list entitled . Alaska and the Northwest Part of North America, 1588–1898: Maps in the Library of Congress (pp. 101), by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, superintendent of maps and charts in that library.

Mr. A. P. C. Griffin, assistant librarian of Congress, has prepared a list of books and articles relating to Hawaii, similar to the Cuban list heretofore mentioned in these pages (Government Printing Office).

Mr. Beckles Willson has nearly ready for publication a history of the Hudson Bay Company, entitled Prince Rupert, His Land and His Company during Two Centuries. The book, though popular in tone, is based upon studies of the original sources, and in some cases of archive material hitherto inaccessible.

The late Don José Fernando Ramirez left a manuscript of Adiciones y Correcciones to Beristain y Souza's Bibliotheca Hispano-Americana. These have now been printed (Mexico, Victoriano Agüeros, pp. xlvii, 662), with a life of Ramirez by D. Luis Gonzalez Obregon.

Noteworthy articles in periodicals: T. K. Urdahl, The Relation of the Colonial Fee-System to Political Liberty (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July); C. K. Adams, Some Neglected Aspects of the Revolutionary War (Atlantic, August); A. B. Hart, The Experience of the United States in Foreign Military Expeditions (Harper's Magazine, September); J. M. Morgan, The Confederacy's Only Foreign War (Century, August); J. T. Mason, The Last of the Confederate Cruisers (Century, August); F. Bancroft, Seward's Ideas of Territorial Expansion (North American Review, July).

The

American Historical Review

THE FRENCH REFORMATION AND THE FRENCH PEOPLE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

THE

HE Reformation had the two-fold character of a social and of a religious revolution. It was not solely against doctrinal corruptions and against ecclesiastical abuses, but also against misery and iniquity that the lower classes rebelled; they sought in the Bible not only for the doctrine of salvation by grace, but for proofs of the primitive equality of all men.

"When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?"

In Germany the works of Janssen have shown the immense part played in the Reformation by the peasants' revolts. It was poor Conrad, "der arme Kunz," who gave the victory to Luther, despite the anathema which the Saxon monk pronounced upon that troublesome ally. In England it is a commonplace to say with Thorold Rogers that the strength of the Reformation was due "to the secret Lollardry, which seemed to be extinguished and was so active," and that "the Puritan movement was essentially and originally one of the middle classes, of the traders in the towns, of the farmers in the country." "1

I.

Did matters take another course in France? Our historians usually see in the Huguenot party above all else a party of noblemen. They think that the aristocracy preferred the rigidity of Protestantism to the pomp of the Roman Church; and that if the new religion did not triumph in France, it was because it could get no hold upon the popular classes. Yet Michelet had said: "In the

2

1 The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 84. See also Taine, Hist. de la Littérature Anglaise, II. 301.

1 Aug. Thierry, Hist. du Tiers État, p. 111. Mignet, Essais, pp. 256–262.

2

"3

sixteenth century at Meaux . . . was kindled the first spark in the religious revolution." " He observed also that in Crespin's martyrology one finds "but three nobles in forty years (1515-1555); . . . the others are generally poor workmen, burgesses and merchants." An American writer, who has thrown a vivid light upon this portion of French history, Professor Henry M. Baird, remarked more recently that Louis de Berquin, executed so late as 1528, was the first in date, amongst the "martyrs," who was a "man of quality." He mentions the indignant surprise shown by Henry II. in 1558 on hearing that the Chastillons, who belonged to the aristocracy, had embraced a religion fit only for low people.* In 1561, the Venetian envoy Giovanni Michiel wrote: "Till now, owing to the severity of the tortures, none have been seen to come forward but common people who, besides their lives, had not much. to lose"... Does not the Catholic historian Florimond Raemond say that the first adherents of the new doctrine were "a few poor, simple men, . . . working men," and "even such as had never done aught but handle the plough and dig the ground?" He rails with bitter irony at those men of low degree, ignorant, illiterate, who "at a moment's notice become excellent theologians." But is not this very banter an involuntary admission of the fact that amongst these "wretched penny-earners" the Reformation found its first partisans ?

6

An indirect proof of this affirmation lies in the very means which the new doctrine employed in its propagation. If its hold had been merely upon a public composed of men of letters and scholars it. would have continued to publish long tracts in Latin, as Le Febvre d' Étaples had begun to do. Had it relied for support mainly upon the nobility it would have spoken in its sermons and books the polished language of the court. Now, what do we see in fact? As early as 1525 the bishop of Meaux is reproached for having distributed in his diocese "books in French which were all error and heresy." The translation of the Bible happening to be one of them, these early heretics obtained the nickname of “Biblians." We find,

7

too, an ever-increasing number of pamphlets for the people, such as Alphabets for the simple and rude," wherein, under pretext of

1 Histoire de France (ed. 1876), X. 155.

2 Ibid., p. 337; and XI. 74, 78.

3 History of the Rise of the Huguenots, I. 318.

Ibid.

5 Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti in Francia, III. 425.

6 Histoire...de l'Hérésie de ce Siècle, Rouen, 1623, pp. 845, 851, 871-873.

S. Berger, Procès de Briçonnet (in Bulletin Historique du Protestantisme Fran

çais, 15 jan., 1895).

8 Alphabet ou Institution Chrestienne.

Lyons, 1558.

teaching the children the rudiments of reading, they are initiated into the doctrine of grace; translations of the minor tracts of Luther;1 collections of Protestant prayers. Thousands of these little books were issued by the clandestine presses of Meaux and Alençon, by the Protestant presses of Lyons and Geneva. Although they were not infrequently burned with their owners, many of them are to be found in our libraries. These little books 'found their way into the peddler's pack, under the trinkets and sweets, and were thus circulated from village to village; more than one peddler paid with his life for the guilt of having transported those forbidden wares. In a barn, at night, by the dim light of the candle-for they must not raise suspicion or by daylight in the forest glade, at the "école buissonière," the illiterate gathered around him who could read. He was a vicar or a monk, brought over to the new ideas, or sometimes a schoolmaster or a lawyer, barrister, proctor or notary; he would read, and around him hardheaded peasants, the women that span, the children with large, wondering eyes, muttered inwardly the strong words of the Bible, or the exhortations of the theologian ; from that day, in some obscure corner of "the most Christian Kingdom," a Protestant community was born.

But the book is not enough for the popular mind; the people in France are fond of singing while they work. All those who were unable to read-and such was then the case with nearly all Frenchmen of the lower classes-would ponder within themselves on what they had heard read by the learned man of the village or of their quarter of the town. All day long, while driving the plough "o'er the furrowed land" or throwing the shuttle at the loom, they would repeat over again, under their breath, the words that had most deeply impressed them; those words caught the very rhythm of their labor, and a song would shape itself upon their lips. The existence of a vast literature of Huguenot songs would alone suffice to prove the existence of a popular Protestantism; for those songs, such are their words, style and rhythm, can only have been written for the common people and sung by them.2

How is it that the contrary opinion still prevails? Why is the statement constantly repeated in France that the French Reformation was an aristocratic movement? At most it is conceded-because it is too strikingly obvious to be denied that the burghers of the towns, the lawyers and the masters of crafts played an important part in it. But why is the part played by the popular classes ignored? There are three reasons:

1 Weiss, Bull. du Protest. Franç., 1887, p. 664; 1888, pp. 155, 432, 500. Bordier, Chansonnier Huguenot, I. pp. xiv, xxviii; Montaiglon, Recueil des Poésies Françaises; Le Roux de Lincy, Chants Historiques Français.