J.H. Merle D'Aubigné: The People's Historian
J.H. Merle D’Aubigné: The People’s Historian
By John Carrick
Posted April 15, 2005
Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné was born in 1794 to a distinguished Huguenot
family in Geneva. In his youth, he received a thoroughly classical education, and
after completing a course in the Humanities, he commenced, at the age of 19, the
study of theology at the Académie de Genève. It is important to note,
however, that by the time of the early nineteenth century, the influence and savour
of John Calvin had long since departed from Geneva and had been substantially replaced
by Unitarianism and Socinian. Merle d’Aubigné later recounted that in
his four years of theological study at the Académie, “not one hour was
consecrated to the study of Holy Scriptures.”[i] Merle noted that the sources most quoted were not
Christ and the Apostles, but Plato, Cicero, and Seneca.
It was into this situation that an heir of John Calvin — the Scot, Robert Haldane
— came in 1816. Haldane issued an invitation to the theological students in
Geneva to meet him in his apartments to study the Bible. Between twenty and thirty
students, including Merle d’Aubigné, responded to Haldane’s invitation.
This invitation clearly incurred the displeasure of one of the professors who “made
it his business to pace up and down under the shady trees of the avenue at the time
the students were assembling, making clear his high displeasure at their attendance,
and noting their names in his pocket book.”[ii] Merle describes Haldane’s influence on himself
in this way: “I met Robert Haldane and heard him read from an English Bible
a chapter from Romans about the natural corruption of man, a doctrine of which I
had never before heard. In fact I was quite astonished to hear of man being corrupt
by nature. I remember saying to Mr Haldane, ‘Now I see that doctrine in the
Bible.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but do you see it in your heart?’
That was but a simple question, yet it came home to my conscience. It was the sword
of the Spirit: and from that time I saw that my heart was corrupted, and knew from
the Word of God that I can be saved by grace alone. So that, if Geneva gave something
to Scotland at the time of the Reformation, if she communicated light to John Knox,
Geneva has received something from Scotland in return in the blessed exertions of
Robert Haldane.”[iii]
Haldane’s brief stay in Geneva (November 1816 to June 1817) unquestionably
contributed to, and reinforced, “le Réveil” or “the Awakening”
in that city which appears to have lasted from 1813 to 1830. In later years, Merle
would point to the apartments that Haldane had once occupied, saying, “There
is the cradle of the second Genevan Reformation.”[iv]
In July 1817, Merle d’Aubigné was ordained as a minister of the established
church in Geneva. He did not, however, enter the pastorate at this stage. He chose
rather to travel widely throughout the German lands before continuing his studies
in the University of Berlin. Thus, in the autumn of 1817, he was able to attend
a celebration of Martin Luther’s tercentenary in the famous Wartburg Castle,
near Eisenach. What struck Merle so forcefully at these tercentenary celebrations
was the fact that, although Luther was evidently hailed as a great German hero who
had had a profound effect upon the German nation, it was essentially his intellectual
and political significance that was being highlighted. The spiritual significance
of Martin Luther appeared to have been forgotten. It was for this reason that, at
the age of 23, Merle resolved to write a history of the Reformation that emphasised
the truly religious significance of Martin Luther and the Reformation. “I want
this history to be truly Christian,” he wrote, “and to give a proper impulse
to the religious spirit.”[v]
In June 1818, Merle assumed the pastorate of the French Reformed Church in Hamburg
which had been established by French Huguenots who had fled from their homeland
during the persecution under Louis XIV. He remained in this pastorate until 1823
when he received an invitation from King Willem I of the Netherlands to become the
pastor of a French- and German-speaking church in Brussels. Merle’s ministry
in Brussels appears to have been more influential than that in Hamburg. Many in
the king’s court attended his church, as did King Willem himself and his Prussian
wife, Wilhelmina Frederika, and also Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, the royal historian
and author of “Unbelief and Revolution.” Merle held this post in Brussels
until the Revolution of 1830, which led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.
After seeking to help the scattered members of his congregation during these months
of crisis, Merle decided to leave Brussels in June 1831 in order to accept an invitation
to assist in the formation of a theological seminary in Geneva. In this he was appointed
Professor of Church History and was shortly afterwards joined by Louis Gaussen,
later famous as the author of a very significant work on the plenary inspiration
of the Scriptures. Merle was to remain at the seminary in Geneva until his death
in 1872.
The resolution that Merle d’Aubigné had first made back in 1817 to write
a history of the Reformation came to fruition during the forty-one years spent as
a professor of church history in Geneva. In a recent work, John B. Roney gives the
following description of Merle’s assiduous labours: “His typical day was
spent every morning working on his writings. Rigorous study was only broken by occasional
guests, who were accorded a brief visit. His daughter Blanche Bidler recalled that
Merle’s office at home was sparse, except for a great number of books that
were piled on a large desk. Merle’s style of inquiry and writing seems to have
necessitated the collection of the many volumes he needed to study. He spread them
out over a number of tables where he could directly refer to them as he wrote. He
then spent the afternoon at school, teaching or attending various committee meetings.
In the evening he returned to Gravaline and once again worked on his writings and
preparation of lectures and speeches. Apart from his regular schedule of academic
work, Merle spent a good amount of time with his family, and he was absent only
when he made a number of trips to other European countries.”[vi] It is important to note that Merle
visited the major libraries of Central and Western Europe in order to read original
documents in Latin, French, German, Dutch, and English.
It was in 1835 that the first volume of The History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century was published in French. This five-volume work was completed in
1853. It is often not realised, however, that this work was followed by The History
of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin in eight volumes, which
were published between 1863 and 1878, the last three volumes posthumously. It is
very important to note that these two works are entirely distinct and separate,
and that much of the confusion which appears to surround the existence of this second
work is due to the fact that it has long since been out of print and is now virtually
unobtainable. It is much to be desired that these eight volumes on The History of
the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin should be republished in
the near future.
The immense popularity of Merle’s History of the Reformation is evident
from Philip Schaff’s observation that Merle’s writings “had a wider
circulation, at least in the English translations, than any other book on church
history.”[vii] It is
valuable to analyse the reasons for this popularity. The first factor in Merle’s
popularity is the powerful personal element that pervades his writings. Merle focuses
on the lives of men such as Luther, Melancthon, Zwingli, Farel, Calvin, Tyndale,
Cranmer, and many others whose names are less well known. He recounts their struggles,
their labours, their sufferings, their failures, their triumphs, and their Christian
heroism. Merle derived this emphasis upon the personal, individual element in history
from his mentor at the University of Berlin, August Neander, and it is undoubtedly
this emphasis which lent vividness and interest to his writing of history and which
contributed to his popularity.
The second factor in Merle’s popularity is the powerful divine element that
pervades his writings. Once again, the influence of Neander upon Merle himself is
discernible, namely, Neander’s concern to discover in church history “the
interpenetration of human life by the divine.”[viii] “The historian,” Merle wrote, “ought
to embrace in his survey the whole field of human affairs. He must, of course, take
into consideration the earthly powers that bear sway in the world, ambition, despotism,
liberty; but he ought to mark also the heavenly powers which religion reveals. The
living God must not be excluded from the world which He created.”[ix] Thus, Merle was concerned not merely
with the external aspects of history, but also with what he regarded as the internal
aspects of history. “There is in history, as in the body, a soul,”[x] wrote Merle. It was the soul of
“the great revolution of the sixteenth century,”[xi] the soul of “the grand drama of the sixteenth
century”[xii] that
Merle sought to lay bare. It is this quality which lends a real warmth to his writings.
Merle does not write as a detached, disinterested spectator; he loves the Reformation
of the sixteenth century, for he sees in it a mighty movement of the Spirit of God
unparalleled since the early days of Christianity. Thus, there is a real, unashamed
spirituality about Merle’s History of the Reformation. He writes this
history sub specie aeternitatis. “These volumes,” he wrote, “lay
down in the chief and foremost place this simple and pregnant principle: GOD IN
HISTORY.”[xiii]
Throughout his writings, Merle emphasizes that the Reformation of the sixteenth
century constitutes “the beginning of modern times.” In other words, it
is the Reformation that constitutes the great watershed that divides the Middle
Ages from the modern age; it is the Reformation that has determined the destiny
and progress of the nations. Roman Catholicism has, both before and since the Reformation,
retarded and degraded the nations in which it has held sway. This is all too evident
in the history and development of nations such as Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Spain,
and Italy. Conversely, Protestantism has emancipated and enfranchised the human
mind in those nations in which it has taken root. This is equally very evident in
the history and development of nations such as England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland,
the Netherlands, and later, the United States of America.
Merle expresses this truth in the following way:
All kinds of human progress date from the Reformation. It produced religious progress
by substituting for the forms and the rites which are the essence of Romish religion,
a life of communion with God. It produced moral progress by introducing, whenever
it was established, the reign of conscience and the sacredness of the domestic hearth.
It produced political and social progress by giving to the nations which accepted
it, an order and a freedom which other nations in vain strive to attain. It produced
progress in philosophy and in science, by showing the unity of these human forms
of teaching with the knowledge of God. It produced progress in education, the well-being
of communities, the prosperity, riches, and greatness of nations. The Reformation,
originating in God, beneficially develops what pertains to man.[xiv]
[1] Cited John B. Roney, The Inside of History:
Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigne and Romantic Historiography (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1996), 37.
[2] S.M. Houghton, ed. The Reformation in England,
Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1977), 4.
[3] Ibid., 5.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] Cited Roney, 9.
[6] Ibid., 72.
[7] Cited ibid., 6.
[8] Cited S.M. Houghton, 6.
[9] Cited Roney, 115.
[10] Cited ibid., 109.
[11] J.H. Merle d’Aubigné, History
of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (London: Religious Tract Society,
1863), 94
[12] Ibid., 366.
[13] Ibid., 2.
[14] Cited Roney, 137.
John Carrick is professor of Church History at Greenville Presbyterian Theological
Seminary. The current Bulletin of the Seminary is dedicated to examining the work
of the great historian Merle d’Aubigné.