Robert, Restless and Always Reforming

John Calvin, the Reformer of Geneva, was born in France. He studied theology in Paris for almost six years from 1523 and was ordained a priest during this time. But by 1553 he had left the Catholic Church, believing he had a divine commission to restore the church to its original purity. Calvin had published his “Institutes” in 1553, dedicating them to the King, Francis I. The Huguenots of France trace their beliefs to Calvin and his Institutes. The Reformation spread across France, becoming strongest in the South and West of the country. The French Protestant Church was officially organized at the Synod of Paris in 1559, along Calvinist lines and beliefs. 

Huguenots were fiercely critical of the Catholic Church, and as a result, faced persecution from the time of the Reformation. The most significant event was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in August 1572, when between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots were killed across France. By the time a young girl by the name of Marie Durand was born, the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 made it illegal to be a Huguenot, and persecution was once again increasing.

Born in 1715, Marie Durand was the sister of Pierre who was a Protestant minister and the Protestant church held meetings in their home. Because of this, in 1728, the authorities turned their sights on the Durand family. At first, because they were unable to arrest Pierre, they imprisoned her father. Before he was taken, he married her to a man named Matthew Serres in the hope she would be safe with him. The plan failed. In 1730, at the age of 15, Marie Durand was arrested, and soon after Matthew was taken too. She was brought before the authorities, charged with the Huguenot heresy. She was 15 yrs old, bright, attractive, marriaed. She was asked to J’abjure (French for recant/deny) the Huguenot faith. She was’nt asked to commit an immoral act, to become a criminal, or even to change the day-to-day quality of her behavior. She was only asked to say, “J’abjure.” No more, no less. She did not comply. Together with thirty other Huguenot women she was put in the Tower of Constance. For 38 yrs she continued…. And instead of the hated word J’abjure she, together with her fellow martyrs, scratched on the wall of the prison tower the single word Recister, (French for resist).

The word is still seen and gaped at by tourists on the stone wall at Aigues-Mortes. We do not understand the terrifying simplicity of a religious commitment which asks nothing of time and gets nothing from time. We can understand a religion which enhances time…. but we cannot understand a faith which is not nourished by the temporal hope that tomorrow things will be better. To sit in a prison room with thirty others and to see the day change into night and summer into autumn, to feel the slow systemic changes within one’s flesh: the drying and wrinkling of the skin, the loss of muscle tone, the stiffening of the joints, the slow stupefaction of the senses-to feel all this and still to persevere seems almost idiotic to a generation which has no capacity to wait and to endure for the faith once and for all handed down by the saints. Some fragments of letters she wrote to those on the outside walls of her confinement.

A Letter of 1762.

I have the honor to inform you that many of my fellow-prisoners were obliged to run in debt in their illnesses last year, and that I was in the same condition. I must tell you in truth that then I owed twenty-five crowns. Now I do not owe so much, having paid fifty livres. But God knows what I have gone through for it! All the summer I have done without a gown, apron, shoes, and other necessary things; provided only I can get out of debt before leaving this cruel prison I shall be satisfied.

A letter of 1764.

Sir, very dear and much honored Pastor, it is to you we have recourse; it is to your pastoral kindness I apply for a remedy to prevent an infection which is likely to spread among us…In the name of the divine mercy, use every possible effort to rescue us from our frightful sepulchre. We are in urgent need of all the help you can give…………Burn my letter if you please. Have the goodness to pray for us, particularly for our sick; the health of nearly all of us is much affected.

Sources:

1. Great Women In Christian History.