Berquin, Louis de

BERQUIN, LOUIS de. - A nobleman of Artois, b.
at Passy, near Paris, in 1499, d. in 1529. His
defection from Catholicism to Protestantism was due
to a quarrel of his with the professor of the Sorbonne Guillaume Du Chêne. He therefore wanted to read
indiscriminately everything, but he soon suffered the
consequences; for a search by the Parlement against the holders of Lutheran books caught him in the
act and on 1 Aug. 1523 he was imprisoned at the Conciergerie. This time he was saved from the resulting trial
by the regent Louise of Savoy.

Though not admitting defeat, B. translated the Enchiridion militis
christiani of Erasmus, but reinforcing it with a Lutheran tinge,
so much so that Erasmus himself could not look kindly on
that wicked game and begged him not to meddle any further in
his literary affairs, even making dark predictions to him. The fact is that on 10 Jan. 1526, by order
of the Parlement, B. returned to prison and his library
at Rambures was searched. His guilt and
obstinacy again emerged in full; except that this
time, through the intervention of the King, just returned from captivity
in Spain, B. was set free, indeed placed in service
with Queen Margaret of Navarre, she too of
Protestant sympathies. For the third time in conflict, always
over anti-Catholic polemics, prison seized him again in
March 1529. A letter of his had now worsened his
position as had also his refusal to listen to the counsels of repentance on the part of Guillaume Budé. Events
then took a bad turn and the very
precipitous judicial procedure reveals that he must
have had truly formidable adversaries if, on 16 Apr.
of that same 1529, he was condemned to make amends
for his errors in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and to perpetual imprisonment, and the next day - before the king, to whom
he had addressed a plea for mercy, could return to the
capital from Blois - he was strangled and burned in the Place-de-
Grève. After the wool-carder Jean Leclerc of Meaux (1524)
B. figures as the first among the heretics condemned in France to a capital sentence. His translation of Erasmus was immediately
reprinted (Antwerp 1529 and Lyon 1542) and his apostasy
gave Catholic France the alarm against Lutheran
infiltration.

Piero Chimicelli