Although the term has wide connotations, in French intellectual history it is usually associated with a group of early Reformers, inspired particularly by the Brethren of the Common Life and Erasmus; whilst acknowledging the necessity of religious reform by recourse to the original sources of the Church's inspiration, the Évangéliques laboured to reform the Church from within and resisted the extreme positions which eventually led to schism. By the opening of the Council of Trent (1545), most members of the group had been reabsorbed into the Roman Church, though some joined Lutheran or Calvinist sects [see Reformation].
Most easily identifiable is the Groupe de Meaux: in 1521 Guillaume Briçonnet brought together in his diocese a number of humanist theologians and preachers, including his mentor Lefèvre d'Étaples, Guillaume Farel, the Hebraist François Vatable, and Gérard Roussel, protégé of Marguerite d'Alençon (de Navarre), who took a profound interest in their work and corresponded with Briçonnet on spiritual and mystical questions. Despite the Sorbonne's opposition, the group proclaimed, in print and from the pulpit, their programme for checking the worldliness and laxity of the clergy, for simplifying the forms of worship, and for bringing the people into closer communion with the revealed word of God by preaching and translation. Lefèvre's Commentarii on the Gospels (1522) summarize the group's aims. But within four years, amid the turmoil caused by defeat at Pavia and by repression of Luther's ‘heresy’ in France, the group had dispersed, with Farel preaching radicalism at Basle, and even Lefèvre and Roussel briefly in exile at Strasburg.
Despite the failure of the Meaux experiment and the hostility of the Sorbonne, Evangelical ideas persisted into the 1530s; some commentators argue that Marot embraced them, and Rabelais clearly supported their synergist attitude to justification. Roussel, appointed Marguerite's chaplain, introduced many of the planned reforms in Navarre, and preached a famous series of Lenten sermons to the court at the Louvre in 1533. The latitudinarianism of the Evangelical movement may be illustrated by the fact that in 1536 Farel was Calvin's colleague in Geneva, whilst Roussel became bishop of Oloron.
[Michael Heath]
Bibliography
- G. Bedouelle, Lefèvre d'Étaples (1972)
- J. K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France (1985)
