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Chapter 24

Besançon

December 1636


Christmas came to Besançon. Or, as far as the great majority of the people who were Catholic and the modest minority of the population who were Lutheran were concerned, Advent came. Aside from the ever-mounding piles of baked goods in the marketplace, they wouldn’t get around to Christmas until late on December 24.

Susanna did not have high hopes of being asked to make holiday clothing for the household. “Not the way that Carey and Kamala think about clothes,” she sighed. “Much less the way that the techies’ wives think about clothes!” She shuddered at the recollection of Michaela Stavros’ preferred garb, which leaned heavily in the direction of well-worn cargo pants and even more well-worn plaid flannel shirts. Lisa Lund’s current taste, in half-deference to her down-time husband, ran to rather full gaucho pants at a mid-calf length and fitted jackets.

From the perspective of Traill and Hamilton, Christmas might as well have been Armageddon. Traill would probably have preferred Armageddon.

Both men objected to the keeping of Christmas altogether, partly on the grounds that it was a pagan holiday adopted by the Catholic church and partly, in Traill’s case, because he interpreted the second commandment to forbid all religious festivals other than the Lord’s Day. Not to mention the connected train of argumentation which held that, “every day is the Lord’s,” which he took to prohibit singling out any day in particular other than the Sabbath, as commanded in Scripture.

“Your Grace,” he admonished Rohan. “In this city, which for all intents and purposes is so full of Catholics that it might as well be pagan, you, as the leading Huguenot, must be particularly strict. Because the grand duke is Lutheran and his spouse Catholic, the city, during the coming season, will be subjected to many non-scriptural celebrations. Incense. Pageants. Moreover . . . ”

“Hah!” Shae whispered to Dominique. “He missed candles.”

“That’s because everybody uses candles all the year around, down-time. They’re not Christmas-y,” Dominique whispered back.

“Moreover” covered quite a bit of territory. Traill objected to the traditional church calendar observed by Catholics, Lutherans, and the Church of England. He objected to liturgies. He objected to “man-made hymns” rather than psalms, and he was being assaulted by them every time he stepped outside of Rohan’s door. He objected, in fact, to all worship practices not specifically commanded by Scripture, “man-made hymns” being only one of them. He digressed into the Scots’ quarrel with English episcopacy (and, for that matter, in the few moments when he had leisure to think about it, with Swedish episcopacy, Danish episcopacy, and the occasional German Lutheran episcopacy), not to mention Lutheran Damenstifte, which he described as barely disguised nunneries, and abbeys that had not been destroyed but turned into schools whose students were daily subject to the idolatrous stone carvings on their walls.

Rohan pointed out that Charles I permitted foreign embassies from Catholic countries to maintain chapels in London. Traill’s view was that simply because one Protestant monarch followed grossly erroneous policies, it did not follow that others should make the same mistake. Indeed, he complained, that Grand Duke Bernhard was not only permitting his wife’s private worship, as Charles I had done for Henrietta Maria, but was generally tolerating Catholicism in Burgundy, although, he said, he must admit, being a fair-minded man himself, that it did not appear that Bernhard was doing so with any great degree of enthusiasm.

At this point, Hamilton disagreed sharply and made his own pro-royalist, even pro-Cork-administration, position crystal clear, showing that when it came to matters of political principle, he was as willing to quarrel with his tutor as with everyone else.

“The principle,” Shae said behind her hand, “being ‘what’s in it for me?’ I presume.”

Marguerite shushed her.

Traill reiterated his imprudent statements in regard to Grand Duke Bernhard’s allowing Claudia de’ Medici to have an in-house chapel and confessor. Rohan advised him strongly that if he said such things where Bernhard’s men could hear him, he would be expeditiously expelled from the Rohan household.

Traill countered with indignation, being of the opinion that Rohan was in no position to consider himself immune to criticism, considering that he had not only permitted Shae to remain at the archbishop’s palace for several days following her accident, but had also permitted the other women in his household, including his own daughter, to call upon her there.

Somehow, Traill was by no means mollified when Rohan pointed out that Grand Duke Bernhard was also tolerating Calvinism, as demonstrated by his own presence on the grand duke’s staff and Traill and Hamilton’s own freedom to worship with the Scots soldiers on the grand duke’s staff who had founded a church in the Quartier Battant.

“Papa,” Marguerite asked in pursuit of a less controversial topic, “how is your treatise on Les Futuriens coming? What will it have to say about the views of the up-timers concerning religion?”

“As far as Dr. Seuss is concerned, it will have little to say about religion in the up-time world. I may have to reserve a more detailed study of that topic until I have other sources. Only one of Seuss’ books deals with religion and it displays minimal concern with doctrine, indeed manages to discuss Christmas without a single mention of our Savior, and gives general approval of gift exchanges and feasting, with maximal concern for other people. Madame Calagna assures me, however, that the costume created by the Grinch is a veiled reference to the custom in the Low Countries of seeing Saint Nicholas of Myra as the patron of gift giving.”

At this point, Shae and Dominique chanted in unison several rhymed sentiments about the non-commercial nature of the holiday when properly observed, and the proper size of charitable hearts, including those of fabled creatures such as this “Grinch.”

Rohan stared at them, once more confirmed in his growing conviction of the incredible significance of Seuss for comprehending the up-timers, as the two girls, backing up to the beginning, managed, without the slightest review, to render most of How the Grinch Stole Christmas with far fewer errors than most down-time adolescents made when called upon to recite their catechisms, whether said catechisms were of the Calvinist, Lutheran, or Catholic persuasion.

There was one point on which the Grinch and James Traill were in utter concord. No matter what they did, the disgusting holiday known as Christmas, or rather, here in Burgundy, Noël, came every blasted year, and there didn’t seem to be any way to get rid of it.

Traill was rather more prepared than the Grinch to dispute the undesirability of this recurring phenomenon. In place of a dog named Max, he had a degree in theology from the University of Leiden in the Northern Low Countries, as they were now called, and an ordination from Geneva.

“Calvin himself,” he proclaimed, “in his own day, disapproved of the celebration of Christmas because its observation had been corrupted by Roman Catholicism.”

“He did not, however, forbid it as a violation of the second commandment,” Rohan countered. “Geneva in Calvin’s day originally observed the four great feast days, or festivals of Christ, that did not always fall on a Sunday, including Christmas. He accepted this practice. That the Scots now find this to be insufficient . . . ”

Traill countered with a discourse on the regulative principle of worship, with a relatively brief digression into the acceptability of special days of thanksgiving as modeled upon the Old Testament festival of Purim.

“For various values of relatively brief,” Shae whispered to Marguerite.

Rohan retaliated with the prescriptions of the Confessio Belgica of 1561 that had been produced to regulate Reformed practice in the Low Countries, the Heidelberg Catechism that came out of the Palatinate in 1563, commissioned by Elector Frederick III and written primarily by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, and Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession, which expressed the position of the Swiss Reformed.

Rohan pointed out with some satisfaction that while the Heidelberg Catechism explained the second command as requiring that a Christian should, “especially on the Sabbath diligently frequent the church of God,” it did not prescribe that such a Christian was to attend church “exclusively on the Sabbath.” Nodding his head decisively, Rohan concluded, “For, as Bullinger said in the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, how can we, if we profess the Christian faith, not take note of Christ’s passion as well as of his resurrection? How can a Christian ignore his ascension?”

Traill objected that the church does not have liberty to introduce into worship any element of worship besides those commanded by Scripture, which gave no place to the four great feasts as a part of congregational worship. Referring to the Heidelberg Catechism in his own turn, he insisted that God requires in the second commandment that believers should not worship Him “in any other way than He has commanded in His Word.” He reiterated the Scots interpretation that anything not specifically commanded was excluded.

“The Scots may choose to take exception to Bullinger’s formulation,” Rohan replied, “but no Reformed tradition on the continent does so. As long as Christmas is celebrated without superstition, that is, which Bullinger specified: ‘Moreover, if in Christian liberty the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, and the ascension into heaven, and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, we approve of it highly.’ The crucial words are ‘religiously celebrate.’

“I will grant you that many of the English mid-winter traditions to which you object appear to be of pagan origin, but they certainly have little to do with the observation of Noël in our French temples. Moreover,” Rohan drew in a deep breath, “when we come to the Church Order of the Synod of Dordt, adopted less than twenty years ago, it not only permits, but rather requires that the Reformed churches ‘shall observe in addition to the Sunday also Christmas . . . ’ and it specifies precisely that such observance ‘shall be a public worship service on December 25 during which the minister shall preach on some aspect of the birth of Christ, usually and preferably the history as told in the Gospels, and the congregation shall praise god with appropriate psalms in congregational singing.’ Which you,” he pointed at Traill, “may do for us or we will find a Reformed minister who will.”

“I believe,” Rohan commented to Carey the morning after this marathon disputation, “that Mr. James Traill may have a famous future as a controversialist. If I had my preferences, however, I would prefer that he develop his reputation in some location other than my residence.”

She smiled. “Overall, Your Grace, I would say that you held your own.”

* * *

“Marguerite, my dear,” the duke said at breakfast.

“Yes, Papa.”

“You have complained upon occasion that nobody really listens to you.”

She looked down at her plate. “I may have. Upon occasion.” Then she grinned. “Rare occasions.”

“It may ameliorate your distress to learn that in one matter, I have listened to what you say during our morning sessions, heeded it, and taken action.”

“How? What?”

“Today, I will send a letter to your Tante Anne and Uncle Soubise. They are still in Paris, although things are disrupted there. It authorizes Anne to begin the process of searching for a suitable bride for your uncle, thus, should they find one and she prove fertile, removing some of the burden of Rohan from your shoulders.”

She jumped out of her chair and curtsied.

“This will take time,” he admonished.

“From what I’ve heard,” Shae said after breakfast, “Your aunt oughtn’t take too much time looking for a bride for Soubise. Your uncle isn’t exactly a spring chicken.”

“Is Colonel Raudegen still with him?” Bismarck asked.

Marguerite nodded. “The grand duke has given permission for him to stay with Uncle Soubise indefinitely. Or, at least, until things calm down a lot.”

Dominique bit her lip. “The newspapers don’t seem to be hyping calm when it comes to France.”

Ruvigny leaned back. “Have you . . . “

“What?”

“Well, have you heard any news in regard to what your mother and M. de Candale are doing?”

Marguerite shook her head.

“I can ask Marc if he’s heard anything,” Susanna offered. “The next time I write. My letters have to go through Geneva, so it isn’t fast, but I think . . . ” She paused. “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think, from a reference he made in the last letter that came, that Marc is somewhere in France right now.”

“How?” Ruvigny was suddenly on the alert.

“He said something about talking to M. d’Espinay de St.-Luc. Of course, I don’t know where he is either, but I would think it’s likely that he’s in France.”

“And he would probably know what Maman is doing,” Marguerite said. “If I remember all the gossip right, he was the lover she left for M. de Candale, the first time around, before we went to Venice and Tancrède was born.”


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