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here are to the part which Gregory had taken against him in binding him with a promise never again to maintain his doctrine on the Eucharist. This is well pointed out by Sudendorf. He plainly shows that the tone of this letter implies that though Berengar might not, after the Roman Council, have again entered into controversy, yet that he evidently had not changed his opinions. The Pope, he felt, had treated him harshly and unjustly. Archbishop Joscelin had also experienced hard usage from the Apostolical See. He writes to him in a forgiving and Christian spirit concerning the great man who, for purposes of ambitious policy, had harshly borne upon them both.

This letter enables us to take a pleasing farewell of Berengar. He was now in extreme old age. For half a century he had fought the battle of truth, reason, antiquity, and Scripture against the novelties and corruptions of an ignorant time. His work was now done. He had committed many errors. He had been guilty of acerbity in attacking, and of weakness in yielding from fear of death. Yet he had borne in a critical period a good and useful testimony to most important doctrine, and even now 'his works do follow him.'

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ART. V.-Catherine de Bourbon, sœur de Henri IV, Etude Historique, par Mme. la COMTESSE D'ARMAILLE. Paris, Didier. 1865.

It seems to be established as the specially feminine department of history to seek out those persons who, well-nigh against their will, are caught up like straws in the whirlwind of political strife; and, though unimportant to the main course of events, yet, by the very fact of being snatched out of their natural quiescent privacy, become exposed to the full light of day, and evince qualities worthy of the attention of a student of human natureand of the effects of great convulsions upon the ordinary spirits who were acted upon by, instead of producing them. History is read in numerous aspects. Primarily we By the light Thy words disclose, Watch Time's full river as it flows; Scanning Thy gracious Providence, Where not too deep for mortal sense.

Or we trace the great and massive forms of political events, the growth of society, and the effect of institutions upon nations. Or, experience on a large scale is sought by the philosophical historian, and grand impressions by him of a poetic frame. But there are also openings for very interesting study, in the characters, not merely of the great, but of the little; indeed, there is more of human and domestic interest in these lesser figures, who are more like those of our own familiar acquaintance, than the great heroes who make history for themselves. The present researches among original documents have brought the possibility of piecing out living portraits of many who have hitherto been no more than cold names in genealogies; and our gallery is continually increasing under the tender and careful hands of female biographers, to whom this labour is especially congenial. The Comtesse d'Armaille, having already drawn out the history of the neglected queen of Louis XV., has now applied herself to another of the gentle women with whom their masters dealt hardly, as mere chattels at their will-namely, Catherine de Bourbon, the pale shadow who follows the glaring light of her brother Henri's career; and we are willing to trace her history, because it is always well to obtain evidence as distinct as we can, of the effects on individual dispositions of the system under which she was brought up.

Catherine de Bourbon was the youngest child and only daughter of Antoine, Duke de Vendôme, the head of the

house of Bourbon, and of the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret. The situation of her family was politically very curious. Her grandfather, and after him her mother, were sovereigns by right, of Navarre, the eldest of all the peninsular kingdoms; but this dominion was little more than a mere title. Navarre itself had been almost devoured by Ferdinand of Aragon in the war far more more memorable for the wound of Ignatius Loyola. than for the addition of a province to Spain. The possessions of the house of Albret consisted chiefly of the counties of Foix and Béarn, the first a fief of the crown of France, and the property of the husband of a past heiress of Navarre; the latter a Navarrese fragment on the French slope of the Pyrenees. On the other hand, the mother of Jeanne d'Albret had been the sister of François I., and though no rights were transmitted through a mere female connexion with the crown, yet the bonds of relationship were admitted, and the consideration thereby derived was great. Moreover, the house of Bourbon was owned to possess the blood of St. Louis in the direct male line, and all the collateral branches of the Valois family having failed, it came constantly nearer to the steps of the throne, although the large family of Henri II. rendered their accession to it extremely improbable at the time of Catherine's birth; which took place at Paris on the 7th of February 1559, during a visit made by Jeanne d'Albret to the French court, in order to be present at the wedding of the young Dauphin with Mary of Scotland.

The religious opinions of the family were in almost as doubtful a state as their position. Marguerite, the mother of Jeanne, and sister of François I. had, in the early days of the Reformation, caught eagerly at the bright hopes of cleansing and illuminating the Church, and sympathized with the earlier preaching of the new doctrine, though she had never separated from the Church. If there had been more in high places such as she, there might have been light instead of schism. Her daughter Jeanne, strong-minded, earnest, and resolute, had for a time viewed the reformers with much distaste, because she had reason to believe that the Calvinist ministers to whom her mother had entrusted some money for the relief of the Lutherans in Germany, had misappropriated it; but as she grew older, reaction from this prejudice set in. She studied for herself, and became increasingly drawn towards Calvinism. As matters stood in her life time, the Roman Catholic Church, hampered by political Popes, and by princes whom they feared to offend, was doing marvellously little to reclaim her deserters, or assert her own purity. Save for the stirrings among the small beginnings of the company of Loyola in Spain, it is hard to point to any bright spot in the continental Church during the critical years

of the 16th century. Kings were compounding with the clergy for their vices, by persecuting the religion that denounced luxury, and the clergy were too much afraid of alienating the kings to enforce on them the lessons of righteousness, temperance, and judgment. The one king who was conscientious in his own fashion, was narrow, grim, and persecuting to a degree that has made hatred to his name universal and lasting, to an almost unrivalled degree. No wonder, then, that truths and moralities, when unassisted by the Church, and proclaimed by those opposed to her, should win the hearts of almost all the ardent youthful generation, who longed for the purity and unclouded doctrine that they believed the new cause to hold out to them. They were times of trial that can scarcely now be realized; ; and strong, indeed, must have been the faith that could patiently cling to the Invisible Church, when the Visible was so sedulously stained by those who held the rule.

Her whole

Jeanne d'Albret was not one of these adherents. heart was with the Huguenots; though at the time of Catherine's birth she still remained within the pale of the Church, waiting till she could persuade her husband to come to a decision. His younger brother, Louis, Prince de Condé, was the acknowledged political champion of the Calvinists, and this high-spirited woman was fretted even to scorn and contempt by her husband's doubts and scruples-scruples, which the tenor of Antoine's life compels us to regard as chiefly the weak vacillations of an infirm character, seeking for expediency.

In 1551, however, his waverings were ended by a cannonshot at the siege of Rouen; and Jeanne, no longer forced to conceal her opinions, repaired to her own capital at Pau, with her two children, and professed herself a Calvinist. Not only this, but she would have her Béarnese subjects of like religion. Catholic worship was proscribed; Mass and Procession were forbidden, on pain of death, and the Churches of Bearn were 'purified' in the Scottish fashion. As was naturally to be expected, the persecuted Catholics looked to Spain for help, and plots were continually formed against Jeanne. Of the failure of these Mme. d'Armaille gives some curious particulars. It had been concerted that by the intrigues of the disaffected Béarnais, the Queen should be surprised and given up to the Inquisition in Spain, her children shut up in fortresses, the kingdom occupied by Spanish troops, and the consent of Charles IX. purchased by the annexation of Béarn to the crown of France. The overthrow of the plot came from a most unlikely quarter.

'Unconcerned with the policy of Philip II., Elisabeth de Valois, Queen of ain, lived quietly in the palace at Madrid, her modest heart divided between

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maternal love and the most evangelical charity, assisted in her benevolent cares by her almoner, the Abbé de St. Etienne; she employed even her lowest servants to seek out the poor, whose secret misery required succour and comfort. One of these was an usher of her apartments, a Béarnese, named Anis Vespier, who was warmly attached to the House of Albret. One night a woman came to tell this man that a Béarnese, who had been for a few days at Madrid, was lying sick and in great distress in a poor lodging that she had hired for him. Vespier immediately visited his countryman, lavished on him the benefactions of his royal mistress, brought him to his own rooms, and gained his whole confidence. Thus he discovered in the poor traveller an agent of the plot against the Queen of Navarre. The sick man, at once grateful and boastful, spoke of the Duke of Guise and the Duke of Alva, vaunted of his interviews with these grand personages, and added that such measures had been taken that, before two months were over, the Queen of Navarre and her children would be in the hands of the Inquisition; and to prove and enforce his words, he showed the papers of which he was the bearer. Vespier restrained his indignation as he heard the confession, and hastened to inform the Queen's almoner. When conducted into the presence of Elisabeth, "he told her in detail," says Vileroy, "all the particulars of this execrable deed." She heard, was shocked, and said with tears in her eyes, "It cannot please God, my masters, that such wickedness should be brought to pass ;" and she resolved to write to the King her brother, and the Queen her mother, to put a stop to it. The Queen of Spain did in fact warn M. de Saint Sulpice, the French ambassador in Spain, who sent a secretary to Paris with letters for the Queen-mother. At the same time he took care to give the Queen of Navarre secret warning of the danger that threatened her, advising her to leave Béarn and take refuge at Nérac, where she would be under the protection of the King of France. Jeanne received the news with her usual determination, and instead of following the advice of the French ambassador, she took measures for defence, visited all the Bearnese fortresses, and even ventured up to the Spanish frontier. She then retired in a leisurely manner to the strong castle of Navarreins, with her ladies and little Catherine, and prepared to sustain a siege. A letter was at the same time dispatched to the Court of France to explain the conspiracy of Philip, and demand justice. This she did not obtain, Catherine being far too prudent to quarrel with the son of Charles V. about the Queen of Navarre; but the plot having failed, and the danger being over, Jeanne resumed a more quiet mode of life.' (P. 11.)

Jeanne's mode of education of her celebrated son is well known-the hardy vigour that she sought to infuse into him by his simple life among the Béarnese mountaineers; her vain endeavours to force scholarship upon his active, practical disposition; and her still vainer efforts to impress religion upon him through her austere and dry Calvinist ministers. Poor Jeanne, she was a hard, stern, masculine woman, of the stamp that seldom attaches a strong and spirited son, her errors were many and unloveable, yet few things are more touching to hear of than her sufferings when necessity forced her to send her son to the court where she knew no means would be spared to ruin him alike in body and soul. Miss Freer has given us some of her original letters to her boy, where the stern, unbending woman strives to throw herself into his innocent pleasures, telling of his dogs, and of the hunts, in the evident wish to keep

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