Fox's Book of Martyrs
Chapter IV
Thus
far our history of persecution has been confined principally to the pagan
world. We come now to a period when persecution, under the guise of
Christianity, committed more enormities than ever disgraced the annals of
paganism. Disregarding the maxims and the spirit of the Gospel, the papal
Church, arming herself with the power of the sword, vexed the Church of God and
wasted it for several centuries, a period most appropriately termed in history,
the "dark ages." The kings of the earth,
gave their power to the "Beast," and submitted to be trodden on by
the miserable vermin that often filled the papal chair, as in the case of
Henry, emperor of Germany. The storm of papal persecution first burst upon the
Waldenses in France.
Popery
having brought various innovations into the Church, and overspread the
Christian world with darkness and superstition, some few, who plainly perceived
the pernicious tendency of such errors, determined to show the light of the
Gospel in its real purity, and to disperse those clouds which artful priests
had raised about it, in order to blind the people, and obscure its real
brightness.
The
principal among these was Berengarius, who, about the
year 1000, boldly preached Gospel truths, according to their primitive purity.
Many, from conviction, assented to his doctrine, and were, on that account,
called Berengarians. To Berengarius
succeeded Peer Bruis, who preached at Toulouse, under the protection of an
earl, named Hildephonsus; and the whole tenets of the
reformers, with the reasons of their separation from the Church of Rome, were
published in a book written by Bruis, under the title of
"Antichrist."
By
the year of Christ 1140, the number of the reformed was very great, and the
probability of its increasing alarmed the pope, who wrote to several princes to
banish them from their dominions, and employed many learned men to write
against their doctrines.
In
A.D. 1147, because of Henry of Toulouse, deemed their most eminent preacher,
they were called Henericians; and as they would not
admit of any proofs relative to religion, but what could be deduced from the
Scriptures themselves, the popish party gave them the name of apostolics. At length, Peter Waldo, or Valdo, a native of
Lyons, eminent for his piety and learning, became a strenuous opposer of
popery; and from him the reformed, at that time, received the appellation of
Waldenses or Waldoys.
Pope
Alexander III being informed by the bishop of Lyons of these transactions,
excommunicated Waldo and his adherents, and commanded the bishop to exterminate
them, if possible, from the face of the earth; hence began the papal
persecutions against the Waldenses.
The
proceedings of Waldo and the reformed, occasioned the first rise of the
inquisitors; for Pope Innocent III authorized certain monks as inquisitors, to
inquire for, and deliver over, the reformed to the secular power. The process
was short, as an accusation was deemed adequate to guilt, and a candid trial
was never granted to the accused.
The
pope, finding that these cruel means had not the intended effect, sent several
learned monks to preach among the Waldenses, and to endeavor to argue them out
of their opinions. Among these monks was one Dominic, who appeared extremely
zealous in the cause of popery. This Dominic instituted an order, which, from
him, was called the order of Dominican friars; and the members of this order
have ever since been the principal inquisitors in the various inquisitions in
the world. The power of the inquisitors was unlimited; they proceeded against
whom they pleased, without any consideration of age, sex, or rank. Let the
accusers be ever so infamous, the accusation was deemed valid; and even
anonymous informations, sent by letter, were thought sufficient evidence. To be rich was a crime
equal to heresy; therefore many who had money were
accused of heresy, or of being favorers of heretics, that they might be obliged
to pay for their opinions. The dearest friends or nearest kindred could not,
without danger, serve any one who was imprisoned on account of religion. To
convey to those who were confined, a little straw, or give them a cup of water,
was called favoring of the heretics, and they were prosecuted accordingly. No
lawyer dared to plead for his own brother, and their malice even extended
beyond the grave; hence the bones of many were dug up and burnt, as examples to
the living. If a man on his deathbed was accused of being a follower of Waldo,
his estates were confiscated, and the heir to them defrauded of his
inheritance; and some were sent to the Holy Land, while the Dominicans took
possession of their houses and properties, and, when the owners returned, would
often pretend not to know them. These persecutions were continued for several
centuries under different popes and other great dignitaries of the Catholic
Church.
The
Albigenses were a people of the reformed religion, who inhabited the country of
Albi. They were condemned on the score of religion in the Council of Lateran,
by order of Pope Alexander III. Nevertheless, they increased so prodigiously,
that many cities were inhabited by persons only of their persuasion, and
several eminent noblemen embraced their doctrines. Among the latter were
Raymond, earl of Toulouse, Raymond, earl of Foix, the earl of Beziers, etc.
A
friar, named Peter, having been murdered in the dominions of the earl of
Toulouse, the pope made the murder a pretense to persecute that nobleman and
his subjects. To effect this, he sent persons throughout all Europe, in order to raise forces to act coercively against the Albigenses, and promised paradise to all that would come to
this war, which he termed a Holy War, and bear arms for forty days. The same
indulgences were likewise held out to all who entered themselves for the purpose as to such as engaged in
crusades to the Holy Land. The brave earl defended Toulouse and other places
with the most heroic bravery and various success against the pope's legates and
Simon, earl of Montfort, a bigoted Catholic nobleman. Unable to subdue the earl
of Toulouse openly, the king of France, and the queen mother, and three
archbishops raised another formidable army, and had the art to persuade the
earl of Toulouse to come to a conference, when he was treacherously seized
upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear barefooted and bareheaded before his
enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by
a severe persecution against the Albigenses; and express
orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred Scriptures. In
the year 1620 also, the persecution against the
Albigenses was very severe. In 1648 a heavy persecution raged throughout
Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive that the
Tartars themselves were ashamed of their barbarities. Among others who suffered
was the Rev. Adrian Chalinski, who was roasted alive by a slow fire, and whose
sufferings and mode of death may depict the horrors which the professors of
Christianity have endured from the enemies of the Redeemer.
The
reformation of papistical error very early was projected in France; for in the
third century a learned man, named Almericus, and six
of his disciples, were ordered to be burnt at Paris for asserting that God was
no otherwise present in the sacramental bread than in any other bread; that it
was idolatry to build altars or shrines to saints and that it was ridiculous to
offer incense to them.
The
martyrdom of Almericus and his pupils did not,
however, prevent many from acknowledging the justness of his notions, and
seeing the purity of the reformed religion, so that the faith of Christ
continually increased, and in time not only spread itself over many parts of
France, but diffused the light of the Gospel over various other countries.
In
the year 1524, at a town in France, called Melden,
one John Clark set up a bill on the church door, wherein he called the pope
Antichrist. For this offence he was repeatedly whipped, and
then branded on the forehead. Going afterward to Mentz, in Lorraine, he
demolished some images, for which he had his right hand and nose cut off, and
his arms and breast torn with pincers. He sustained these cruelties with
amazing fortitude, and was even sufficiently cool to
sing the One hundredth and fifteenth Psalm, which expressly forbids idolatry;
after which he was thrown into the fire, and burnt to ashes.
Many
persons of the reformed persuasion were, about this time, beaten, racked,
scourged, and burnt to death, in several parts of France, but more particularly
at Paris, Malda, and Limosin.
A
native of Malda was burnt by a slow fire, for saying that Mass was a plain
denial of the death and passion of Christ. At Limosin,
John de Cadurco, a clergyman of the reformed religion, was apprehended and
ordered to be burnt.
Francis
Bribard, secretary to cardinal de Pellay, for speaking in favor of the reformed,
had his tongue cut out, and was then burnt, A.D. 1545. James Cobard, a
schoolmaster in the city of St. Michael, was burnt, A.D. 1545, for saying 'That
Mass was useless and absurd'; and about the same time, fourteen men were burnt
at Malda, their wives being compelled to stand by and behold the execution.
A.D.
1546, Peter Chapot brought a number of Bibles in the
French tongue to France, and publicly sold them there;
for which he was brought to trial, sentenced, and executed a few days
afterward. Soon after, a cripple of Meaux, a schoolmaster of Fera, named
Stephen Poliot, and a man named John English, were burnt for the faith.
Monsieur
Blondel, a rich jeweler, was, in A.D. 1548, apprehended at Lyons, and sent to
Paris; there he was burnt for the faith by order of
the court, A.D. 1549. Herbert, a youth of nineteen years of age, was committed
to the flames at Dijon; as was also Florent Venote in the same year.
In
the year 1554, two men of the reformed religion, with the son and daughter of
one of them, were apprehended and committed to the castle of Niverne. On examination, they confessed their faith, and were ordered to execution; being smeared with
grease, brimstone, and gunpowder, they cried, "Salt on, salt on this
sinful and rotten flesh." Their tongues were then cut out, and they were
afterward committed to the flames, which soon consumed them, by means of the
combustible matter with which they were besmeared.
On
the twenty second day of August, 1572, commenced this diabolical act of sanguinary brutality. It
was intended to destroy at one stroke the root of the Protestant tree, which
had only before partially suffered in its branches. The king of France had
artfully proposed a marriage, between his sister and the prince of Navarre, the
captain and prince of the Protestants. This imprudent marriage was publicly
celebrated at Paris, August 18, by the cardinal of Bourbon, upon a high stage
erected for the purpose. They dined in great pomp with the bishop,
and supped with the king at Paris. Four days after this, the prince
(Coligny), as he was coming from the Council, was shot in both arms; he then
said to Maure, his deceased mother's minister, "O my brother, I do now
perceive that I am indeed beloved of my God, since for His most holy sake I am
wounded." Although the Vidam advised him to fly, yet he abode
in Paris, and was soon after slain by Bemjus; who
afterward declared he never saw a man meet death more valiantly than the
admiral.
The
soldiers were appointed at a certain signal to burst out instantly to the
slaughter in all parts of the city. When they had killed the admiral, they
threw him out at a window into the street, where his head was cut off, and sent
to the pope. The savage papists, still raging against him, cut off his arms and
private members, and, after dragging him three days through the streets, hung
him by the heels without the city. After him they slew many great and honorable
persons who were Protestants; as Count Rochfoucault, Telinius,
the admiral's son-in-law, Antonius, Clarimontus,
marquis of Ravely, Lewes Bussius, Bandineus,
Pluvialius, Burneius, etc., and falling upon the common people, they continued
the slaughter for many days; in the three first they slew of all ranks and
conditions to the number of ten thousand. The bodies were thrown into the
rivers, and blood ran through the streets with a strong current, and the river
appeared presently like a stream of blood. So furious was their hellish rage,
that they slew all papists whom they suspected to be not very staunch to their
diabolical religion. From Paris the destruction spread to all quarters of the
realm.
At
Orleans, a thousand were slain of men, women, and children, and six thousand at
Rouen.
At Meldith, two hundred were put into prison, and later
brought out by units, and cruelly murdered.
At
Lyons, eight hundred were massacred. Here children hanging about their parents,
and parents affectionately embracing their children, were pleasant food for the
swords and bloodthirsty minds of those who call themselves the Catholic Church.
Here three hundred were slain in the bishop's house; and the impious monks
would suffer none to be buried.
At Augustobona, on the people hearing of the massacre at
Paris, they shut their gates that no Protestants might escape, and searching
diligently for every individual of the reformed Church, imprisoned and then
barbarously murdered them. The same curelty they
practiced at Avaricum, at Troys, at Toulouse, Rouen
and many other places, running from city to city, towns, and villages, through
the kingdom.
As a
corroboration of this horrid carnage, the following interesting narrative,
written by a sensible and learned Roman Catholic, appears in this place, with
peculiar propriety.
"The
nuptials (says he) of the young king of Navarre with the French king's sister,
was solemnized with pomp; and all the endearments, all the assurances of
friendship, all the oaths sacred among men, were profusely lavished by
Catharine, the queen-mother, and by the king; during which, the rest of the
court thought of nothing but festivities, plays, and masquerades. At last, at
twelve o'clock at night, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, the signal was given.
Immediately all the houses of the Protestants were forced open at once. Admiral
Coligny, alarmed by the uproar jumped out of bed, when a company of assassins
rushed in his chamber. They were headed by one Besme, who had been bred up as a domestic in the family of
the Guises. This wretch thrust his sword into the admiral's breast,
and also cut him in the face. Besme was a
German, and being afterwards taken by the Protestants, the Rochellers
would have brought him, in order to hang and quarter
him; but he was killed by one Bretanville. Henry, the
young duke of Guise, who afterwards framed the Catholic league, and was
murdered at Blois, standing at the door until the horrid butchery should be
completed, called aloud, 'Besme! is it done?'
Immediately after this, the ruffians threw the body out of the window, and
Coligny expired at Guise's feet.
"Count
de Teligny also fell a sacrifice. He had married,
about ten months before, Coligny's daughter. His countenance was so engaging,
that the ruffians, when they advanced in order to kill
him, were struck with compassion; but others, more barbarous, rushing forward,
murdered him.
"In
the meantime, all the friends of Coligny were assassinated throughout Paris;
men, women, and children were promiscuously slaughtered and every street was
strewed with expiring bodies. Some priests, holding up a crucifix in one hand,
and a dagger in the other, ran to the chiefs of the murderers, and strongly
exhorted them to spare neither relations nor friends.
"Tavannes, marshal of France, an ignorant, superstitious
soldier, who joined the fury of religion to the rage of party, rode on
horseback through the streets of Paris, crying to his men, 'Let blood! let
blood! bleeding is as wholesome in August as in May.' In the memories of the
life of this enthusiastic, written by his son, we are told that the father,
being on his deathbed, and making a general confession of his actions, the
priest said to him, with surprise, 'What! no mention of St. Bartholomew's
massacre?' to which Tavannes replied, 'I consider it
as a meritorious action, that will wash away all my sins.' Such horrid
sentiments can a false spirit of religion inspire!
"The
king's palace was one of the chief scenes of the butchery; the king of Navarre
had his lodgings in the Louvre, and all his domestics were Protestants. Many of
these were killed in bed with their wives; others, running away naked, were
pursued by the soldiers through the several rooms of the palace, even to the
king's antichamber. The young wife of Henry of
Navarre, awaked by the dreadful uproar, being afraid
for her consort, and for her own life, seized with horror, and half dead, flew
from her bed, in order to throw herself at the feet of
the king her brother. But scarce had she opened her chamber door, when some of
her Protestant domestics rushed in for refuge. The soldiers immediately
followed, pursued them in sight of the princess, and killed one who crept under
her bed. Two others, being wounded with halberds, fell at the queen's feet, so
that she was covered with blood.
"Count
de la Rochefoucault, a young nobleman, greatly in the
king's favor for his comely air, his politeness, and a certain peculiar
happiness in the turn of his conversation, had spent the evening until eleven
o'clock with the monarch, in pleasant familiarity; and had given a loose, with
the utmost mirth, to the sallies of his imagination. The monarch felt some
remorse, and being touched with a kind of compassion, bid him, two or three
times, not to go home, but lie in the Louvre. The count said he must go to his
wife; upon which the king pressed him no farther, but said, 'Let him go! I see
God has decreed his death.' And in two hours after he was murdered.
"Very
few of the Protestants escaped the fury of their enthusiastic persecutors.
Among these was young La Force (afterwards the famous Marshal de la Force) a child about ten years of age, whose deliverance was
exceedingly remarkable. His father, his elder brother, and he himself were
seized together by the Duke of Anjou's soldier. These murderers flew at all
three, and struck them at random, when they all fell, and lay one upon another.
The youngest did not receive a single blow, but appearing as if he was dead,
escaped the next day; and his life, thus wonderfully preserved, lasted four
score and five years.
"Many
of the wretched victims fled to the water side, and some swam over the Seine to
the suburbs of St. Germaine. The king saw them from his window, which looked
upon the river, and fired upon them with a carbine that had been loaded for
that purpose by one of his pages; while the queen-mother, undisturbed and
serene in the midst of slaughter, looking down from a balcony, encouraged the
murderers and laughed at the dying groans of the slaughtered. This barbarous
queen was fired with a restless ambition, and she perpetually shifted her party
in order to satiate it.
"Some
days after this horrid transaction, the French court endeavored to palliate it
by forms of law. They pretended to justify the massacre by a
calumny, and accused the admiral of a conspiracy, which no one believed.
The parliament was commended to proceed against the memory of Coligny; and his
dead body was hanged in chains on Montfaucon gallows. The king himself went to
view this shocking spectacle. So one of his courtiers
advised him to retire, and complaining of the stench of the corpse, he replied,
'A dead enemuy smells well.' The massacres on St.
Bartholomew's day are painted in the royal saloon of the Vatican at Rome, with
the following inscription: Pontifex, Coligny necem probat, i.e., 'The pope approves of Coligny's death.'
"The
young king of Navarre was spared through policy, rather than from the pity of
the queen-mother, she keeping him prisoner until the
king's death, in order that he might be as a security and pledge for the
submission of such Protestants as might effect their
escape.
"This
horrid butchery was not confined merely to the city of Paris. The like orders
were issued from court to the governors of all the provinces in France; so
that, in a week's time, about one hundred thousand Protestants were cut to
pieces in different parts of the kingdom! Two or three governors only refused
to obey the king's orders. One of these, named Montmorrin,
governor of Auvergne, wrote the king the following letter, which deserves to be
transmitted to the latest posterity.
"SIRE:
I have received an order, under your majesty's seal, to put to death all the
Protestants in my province. I have too much respect for your majesty, not to
believe the letter a forgery; but if (which God forbid) the order should be
genuine, I have too much respect for your majesty to obey it."
At
Rome the horrid joy was so great, that they appointed a day of high festival,
and a jubilee, with great indulgence to all who kept it and showed every
expression of gladness they could devise! and the man who first carried the
news received 1000 crowns of the cardinal of Lorraine for his ungodly message.
The king also commanded the day to be kept with every demonstration of joy,
concluding now that the whole race of Huguenots was extinct.
Many
who gave great sums of money for their ransom were immediately after slain; and
several towns, which were under the king's promise of protection and safety,
were cut off as soon as they delivered themselves up, on those promises, to his
generals or captains.
At
Bordeaux, at the instigation of a villainous monk, who used to urge the papists
to slaughter in his sermons, two hundred and sixty-four were cruelly murdered;
some of them senators. Another of the same pious fraternity produced a similar
slaughter at Agendicum, in Maine, where the populace
at the holy inquisitors' satanical suggestion, ran upon the Protestants, slew
them, plundered their houses, and pulled down their church.
The
duke of Guise, entering into Blois, suffered his
soldiers to fly upon the spoil, and slay or drown all the Protestants they
could find. In this they spared neither age nor sex; defiling the women, and then murdering them; from whence he went to Mere,
and committed the same outrages for many days together. Here they found a
minister named Cassebonius, and threw him into the
river.
At
Anjou, they slew Albiacus, a minister; and many women were defiled and murdered
there; among whom were two sisters, abused before their father, whom the
assassins bound to a wall to see them, and then slew them and him.
The
president of Turin, after giving a large sum for his life, was cruelly beaten
with clubs, stripped of his clothes, and hung feet upwards, with his head and
breast in the river: before he was dead, they opened his belly, plucked out his
entrails, and threw them into the river; and then carried his heart about the
city upon a spear.
At
Barre great cruelty was used, even to young children, whom they cut open,
pulled out their entrails, which through very rage they gnawed with their
teeth. Those who had fled to the castle, when they yielded, were almost hanged.
Thus they did at the city of Matiscon;
counting it sport to cut off their arms and legs and afterward kill them; and
for the entertainment of their visitors, they often threw the Protestants from
a high bridge into the river, saying, "Did you ever see men leap so
well?"
At
Penna, after promising them safety, three hundred were inhumanly butchered; and
five and forty at Albia, on the Lord's Day. At Nonne, though it yielded on conditions of safeguard, the
most horrid spectacles were exhibited. Persons of both sexes and conditions
were indiscriminately murdered; the streets ringing with doleful cries, and
flowing with blood; and the houses flaming with fire, which the abandoned
soldiers had thrown in. One woman, being dragged from her hiding place with her
husband, was first abused by the brutal soldiers, and then with a sword which
they commanded her to draw, they forced it while in her hands into the bowels
of her husband.
At Samarobridge, they murdered above one hundred Protestants,
after promising them peace; and at Antsidor, one
hundred were killed, and cast part into a jakes, and part into a river. One hundred put into a prison at Orleans, were destroyed by the furious multitude.
The
Protestants at Rochelle, who were such as had miraculously escaped the rage of
hell, and fled there, seeing how ill they fared who submitted to those holy
devils, stood for their lives; and some other cities, encouraged thereby, did
the like. Against Rochelle, the king sent almost the whole power of France,
which besieged it seven months; though by their assaults, they did very little
execution on the inhabitants, yet by famine, they destroyed eighteen thousand
out of two and twenty. The dead, being too numerous for the living to bury,
became food for vermin and carnivorous birds. Many took their coffins into the
church yard, laid down in them, and breathed their last. Their diet had long
been what the minds of those in plenty shudder at;
even human flesh, entrails, dung, and the most loathsome things, became at last
the only food of those champions for that truth and liberty, of which the world
was not worthy. At every attack, the besiegers met with such an intrepid
reception, that they left one hundred and thirty-two captains, with a
proportionate number of men, dead in the field. The siege at last was broken up
at the request of the duke of Anjou, the king's brother, who was proclaimed
king of Poland, and the king, being wearied out, easily complied, whereupon
honorable conditions were granted them.
It
is a remarkable interference of Providence, that, in all this dreadful
massacre, not more than two ministers of the Gospel were involved in it.
The
tragical sufferings of the Protestants are too numerous to detail; but the
treatment of Philip de Deux will give an idea of the rest. After the miscreants
had slain this martyr in his bed, they went to his wife, who was then attended
by the midwife, expecting every moment to be delivered. The midwife entreated
them to stay the murder, at least till the child, which was the twentieth,
should be born. Notwithstanding this, they thrust a dagger up to the hilt into
the poor woman. Anxious to be delivered, she ran into a corn loft; but hither
they pursued her, stabbed her in the belly, and then threw her into the street.
By the fall, the child came from the dying mother, and
being caught up by one of the Catholic ruffians, he stabbed the infant, and
then threw it into the river.
The
persecutions occasioned by the revocation of the edict of Nantes took place
under Louis XIV. This edict was made by Henry the Great of France in 1598, and secured to the Protestants an equal right in every
respect, whether civil or religious, with the other subjects of the realm. All
those privileges Louis the XIV confirmed to the Protestants by another statute,
called the edict of Nismes, and kept them inviolably
to the end of his reign.
On
the accession of Louis XIV the kingdom was almost
ruined by civil wars.
At
this critical juncture, the Protestants, heedless of our Lord's admonition,
"They that take the sword shall perish with the sword," took such an
active part in favor of the king, that he was constrained to acknowledge
himself indebted to their arms for his establishment on the throne. Instead of
cherishing and rewarding that party who had fought for him, he reasoned that
the same power which had protected could overturn him, and, listening to the
popish machinations, he began to issue out proscriptions and restrictions,
indicative of his final determination. Rochelle was presently fettered with an
incredible number of denunciations. Montauban and Millau were sacked by
soldiers. Popish commissioners were appointed to preside over the affairs of
the Protestants, and there was no appeal from their ordinance, except to the
king's council. This struck at the root of their civil and religious exercises,
and prevented them, being Protestants, from suing a Catholic in any court of
law. This was followed by another injunction, to make an inquiry in all
parishes into whatever the Protestants had said or done for twenty years past.
This filled the prisons with innocent victims, and condemned others to the
galleys or banishment.
Protestants
were expelled from all offices, trades, privileges, and employs; thereby
depriving them of the means of getting their bread: and they proceeded to such
excess in this brutality, that they would not suffer even the midwives to
officiate, but compelled their women to submit themselves in that crisis of
nature to their enemies, the brutal Catholics. Their children were taken from
them to be educated by the Catholics, and at seven years of age, made to
embrace popery. The reformed were prohibited from relieving their own sick or
poor, from all private worship, and divine service was to be performed in the
presence of a popish priest. To prevent the unfortunate victims from leaving
the kingdom, all the passages on the frontiers were strictly guarded; yet, by
the good hand of God, about 150,000 escaped their vigilance, and emigrated to
different countries to relate the dismal narrative.
All
that has been related hitherto were only infringements on their established
charter, the edict of Nantes. At length the diabolical revocation of that edict
passed on the eighteenth of October, 1685, and was
registered the twenty-second, contrary to all form of
law. Instantly the dragoons were quartered upon the Protestants throughout the
realm, and filled all France with the like news, that the king would no longer
suffer any Huguenots in his kingdom, and therefore they must resolve to change
their religion. Hereupon the intendants in every parish (which were popish
governors and spies set over the Protestants) assembled the reformed
inhabitants, and told them they must, without delay, turn Catholics, either
freely or by force. The Protestants replied, that they
'were ready to sacrifice their lives and estates to the king, but their
consciences being God's they could not so dispose of them.'
Instantly
the troops seized the gates and avenues of the cities, and placing guards in
all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying, "Die, or be
Catholics!" In short, they practiced every wickedness and horror they
could devise to force them to change their religion.
They
hanged both men and women by their hair or their feet, and
smoked them with hay until they were nearly dead; and if they still refused to
sign a recantation, they hung them up again and repeated their barbarities,
until, wearied out with torments without death, they forced many to yield to
them.
Others,
they plucked off all the hair of their heads and beards with
pincers. Others they threw on great fires, and pulled
them out again, repeating it until they extorted a promise to recant.
Some
they stripped naked, and after offering them the most infamous insults, they
stuck them with pins from head to foot, and lanced
them with penknives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers they dragged them by
the nose until they promised to turn. Sometimes they tied fathers and husbands,
while they ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes. Multitudes
they imprisoned in the most noisome dungeons, where they practised
all sorts of torments in secret. Their wives and children
they shut up in monasteries.
Such
as endeavored to escape by flight were pursued in the woods, and hunted in the
fields, and shot at like wild beasts; nor did any condition or quality screen
them from the ferocity of these infernal dragoons: even the members of
parliament and military officers, though on actual service, were ordered to
quit their posts, and repair directly to their houses to suffer the like storm.
Such as complained to the king were sent to the Bastile, where they drank the same cup. The bishops and the
intendants marched at the head of the dragoons, with a troop of missionaries,
monks, and other ecclesiastics to animate the soldiers to an execution so
agreeable to their Holy Church, and so glorious to their demon god and their
tyrant king.
In
forming the edict to repeal the edict of Nantes, the council were divided; some
would have all the ministers detained and forced into popery as well as the
laity; others were for banishing them, because their presence would strengthen
the Protestants in perseverance: and if they were forced to turn, they would
ever be secret and powerful enemies in the bosom of the Church, by their great
knowledge and experience in controversial matters. This reason prevailing, they
were sentenced to banishment, and only fifteen days allowed them to depart the
kingdom.
On
the same day that the edict for revoking the Protestants' charter was
published, they demolished their churches and banished their ministers, whom
they allowed but twenty-four hours to leave Paris. The papists would not suffer
them to dispose of their effects, and threw every
obstacle in their way to delay their escape until the limited time was expired
which subjected them to condemnation for life to the galleys. The guards were
doubled at the seaports, and the prisons were filled with the victims, who endured
torments and wants at which human nature must shudder.
The
sufferings of the ministers and others, who were sent
to the galleys, seemed to exceed all. Chained to the
oar, they were exposed to the open air night and day, at all seasons, and in
all weathers; and when through weakness of body they fainted under the oar,
instead of a cordial to revive them, or viands to refresh them, they received
only the lashes of a scourge, or the blows of a cane or rope's end. For the
want of sufficient clothing and necessary cleanliness, they were most
grievously tormented with vermin, and cruelly pinched with the cold, which
removed by night the executioners who beat and tormented them by day. Instead
of a bed, they were allowed sick or well, only a hard board, eighteen inches
broad, to sleep on, without any covering but their wretched apparel; which was
a shirt of the coarsest canvas, a little jerkin of red serge, slit on each side
up to the armholes, with open sleeves that reached not to the elbow; and once
in three years they had a coarse frock, and a little cap to cover their heads,
which were always kept close shaved as a mark of their infamy. The allowance of
provision was as narrow as the sentiments of those who condemned them to such
miseries, and their treatment when sick is too shocking to relate; doomed to
die upon the boards of a dark hold, covered with vermin, and without the least
convenience for the calls of nature. Nor was it among the least of the horrors
they endured, that, as ministers of Christ, and honest men, they were chained
side by side to felons and the most execrable villains, whose blasphemous
tongues were never idle. If they refused to hear Mass, they were sentenced to
the bastinado, of which dreadful punishment the following is a description.
Preparatory to it, the chains are taken off, and the victims delivered into the
hands of the Turks that preside at the oars, who strip them quite naked, and
stretching them upon a great gun, they are held so that they cannot stir;
during which there reigns an awful silence throughout the galley. The Turk who
is appointed the executioner, and who thinks the sacrifice acceptable to his
prophet Mahomet, most cruelly beats the wretched victim with a rough cudgel, or
knotty rope's end, until the skin is flayed off his bones, and he is near the
point of expiring; then they apply a most tormenting mixture of vinegar and
salt, and consign him to that most intolerable hospital where thousands under
their cruelties have expired.
We
pass over many other individual maretyrdoms to insert
that of John Calas, which took place as recently as 1761, and is an indubitable
proof of the bigotry of popery, and shows that neither
experience nor improvement can root out the inveterate prejudices of the Roman
Catholics, or render them less cruel or inexorable to Protestants.
John
Calas was a merchant of the city of Toulouse, where he had been settled, and
lived in good repute, and had married an English woman of French extraction.
Calas and his wife were Protestants, and had five sons, whom they educated in
the same religion; but Lewis, one of the sons, became a Roman Catholic, having
been converted by a maidservant, who had lived in the family about thirty
years. The father, however, did not express any resentment or ill-will upon the
occasion, but kept the maid in the family and settled an annuity upon the son.
In October, 1761, the family consisted of John Calas
and his wife, one woman servant, Mark Antony Calas, the eldest son, and Peter
Calas, the second son. Mark Antony was bred to the law, but could not be
admitted to practice, on account of his being a Protestant; hence he grew
melancholy, read all the books he could procure relative to suicide, and seemed
determined to destroy himself. To this may be added
that he led a dissipated life, was greatly addicted to gaming, and did all
which could constitute the character of a libertine; on which account his
father frequently reprehended him and sometimes in terms of severity, which
considerably added to the gloom that seemed to oppress him.
On
the thirteenth of October, 1761, Mr. Gober la Vaisse,
a young gentleman about 19 years of age, the son of La Vaisse, a celebrated
advocate of Toulouse, about five o'clock in the evening,
was met by John Calas, the father, and the eldest son Mark Antony, who was his
friend. Calas, the father, invited him to supper, and the family and their
guest sat down in a room up one pair of stairs; the whole company, consisting
of Calas the father, and his wife, Antony and Peter Calas, the sons, and La
Vaisse the guest, no other person being in the house, except the maidservant
who has been already mentioned.
It
was now about seven o'clock. The supper was not long; but before it was over,
Antony left the table, and went into the kitchen, which was on the same floor,
as he was accustomed to do. The maid asked him if he
was cold? He answered, "Quite the contrary, I
burn"; and then left her. In the meantime his friend and family left the
room they had supped in, and went into a bed-chamber; the father and La Vaisse
sat down together on a sofa; the younger son Peter in an elbow chair; and the
mother in another chair; and, without making any inquiry after Antony,
continued in conversation together until between nine and ten o'clock, when La
Vaisse took his leave, and Peter, who had fallen asleep, was awakened to attend
him with a light.
On
the ground floor of Calas's house was a shop and a
warehouse, the latter of which was divided from the shop by a pair of folding
doors. When Peter Calas and La Vaisse came downstairs into the shop, they were
extremely shocked to see Antony hanging in his shirt,
from a bar which he had laid across the top of the two folding doors, having
half opened them for that purpose. On discovery of this horrid spectacle, they
shrieked out, which brought down Calas the father, the mother being seized with
such terror as kept her trembling in the passage above. When the maid
discovered what had happened, she continued below, either because she feared to
carry an account of it to her mistress, or because she busied herself in doing
some good office to her master, who was embracing the body of his son, and
bathing it in his tears. The mother, therefore, being thus left alone, went
down and mixed in the scene that has been already described, with such emotions
as it must naturally produce. In the meantime Peter
had been sent for La Moire,
a surgeon in the neighborhood. La Moire was not at
home, but his apprentice, Mr. Grosle, came instantly.
Upon examination, he found the body quite dead; and by this time a papistical
crowd of people were gathered about the house, and, having by some means heard
that Antony Calas was suddenly dead, and that the surgeon who had examined the body,
declared that he had been strangled, they took it into their heads he had been
murdered; and as the family was Protestant, they presently supposed that the
young man was about to change his religion, and had been put to death for that
reason.
The
poor father, overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his child, was advised by
his friends to send for the officers of justice to prevent his being torn to
pieces by the Catholic multitude, who supposed he had murdered his son. This
was accordingly done and David, the chief magistrate, or capitol, took the
father, Peter the son, the mother, La Vaisse, and the maid, all into custody,
and set a guard over them. He sent for M. de la Tour,
a physician, and MM. la Marque and Perronet, surgeons, who examined the body
for marks of violence, but found none except the mark of the ligature on the
neck; they found also the hair of the deceased done up in the usual manner,
perfectly smooth, and without the least disorder: his clothes were also
regularly folded up, and laid upon the counter, nor was his shirt either torn
or unbuttoned.
Notwithstanding
these innocent appearances, the capitol thought proper to agree with the
opinion of the mob, and took it into his head that old Calas had sent for La
Vaisse, telling him that he had a son to be hanged; that La Vaisse had come to
perform the office of executioner; and that he had received assistance from the
father and brother.
As
no proof of the supposed fact could be procured, the capitol had recourse to a monitory, or general information, in which the crime was
taken for granted, and persons were required to give such testimony against it
as they were able. This recites that La Vaisse was commissioned by the
Protestants to be their executioner in ordinary, when any of their children
were to be hanged for changing their religion: it recites also, that, when the
Protestants thus hang their children, they compel them to kneel, and one of the
interrogatories was, whether any person had seen Antony Calas kneel before his
father when he strangled him: it recites likewise, that Antony died a Roman
Catholic, and requires evidence of his catholicism.
But
before this monitory was published, the mob had got a notion that Antony Calas
was the next day to have entered into the fraternity
of the White Penitents. The capitol therefore caused his body to be buried in
the middle of St. Stephen's Church. A few days after the interment of the
deceased, the White Penitents performed a solemn service for him in their
chapel; the church was hung with white, and a tomb was raised in the middle of
it, on the top of which was placed a human skeleton, holding in one hand a
paper, on which was written "Abjuration of heresy," and in the other
a palm, the emblem of martyrdom. The next day the Franciscans performed a
service of the same kind for him.
The capitol continued the persecution with unrelenting severity,
and, without the least proof coming in, thought fit to condemn the unhappy
father, mother, brother, friend, and servant, to the torture,
and put them all into irons on the eighteenth of November.
From
these dreadful proceedings the sufferers appealed to the parliament, which
immediately took cognizance of the affair, and annulled the sentence of the
capitol as irregular, but they continued the prosecution, and, upon the hangman
deposing it was impossible Antony should hang himself as was pretended, the
majority of the parliament were of the opinion, that the prisoners were guilty,
and therefore ordered them to be tried by the criminal court of Toulouse. One
voted him innocent, but after long debates the majority was for the torture and wheel, and probably condemned the father by
way of experiment, whether he was guilty or not, hoping he would, in the agony,
confess the crime, and accuse the other prisoners, whose fate, therefore, they
suspended.
Poor
Calas, however, an old man of sixty-eight, was condemned to this dreadful
punishment alone. He suffered the torture with great constancy, and was led to
execution in a frame of mind which excited the admiration of all that saw him,
and particularly of the two Dominicans (Father Bourges and Father Coldagues)
who attended him in his last moments, and declared that they thought him not
only innocent of the crime laid to his charge, but also an exemplary instance
of true Christian patience, fortitude, and charity. When he saw the executioner
prepared to give him the last stroke, he made a fresh declaration to Father
Bourges, but while the words were still in his mouth, the capitol, the author
of this catastrophe, who came upon the scaffold merely to gratify his desire of
being a witness of his punishment and death, ran up to him, and bawled out,
"Wretch, there are fagots which are to reduce your body to ashes! speak
the truth." M. Calas made no reply, but turned
his head a little aside; and that moment the executioner
did his office.
The
popular outcry against this family was so violent in Languedoc, that every body expected to see the children of Calas broke upon the wheel, and the mother burnt alive.
Young
Donat Calas was advised to fly into Switzerland: he went, and found a gentleman
who, at first, could only pity and relieve him, without daring to judge of the
rigor exercised against the father, mother, and brothers. Soon after, one of
the brothers, who was only banished, likewise threw himself into the arms of
the same person, who, for more than a month, took every possible precaution to
be assured of the innocence of the family. Once convinced, he thought himself,
obliged, in conscience, to employ his friends, his purse, his pen, and his
credit, to repair the fatal mistake of the seven judges of Toulouse, and to
have the proceedings revised by the king's council. This revision lasted three
years, and it is well known what honor Messrs. de Grosne
and Bacquancourt acquired by investigating this
memorable cause. Fifty masters of the Court of Requests unanimously declared
the whole family of Calas innocent, and recommended
them to the benevolent justice of his majesty. The Duke de Choiseul, who never
let slip an opportunity of signalizing the greatness of his character, not only
assisted this unfortunate family with money, but obtained for them a gratuity
of 36,000 livres from the king.
On
the ninth of March, 1765, the arret was signed which
justified the family of Calas, and changed their fate.
The ninth of March, 1762, was the very day on which
the innocent and virtuous father of that family had been executed. All Paris
ran in crowds to see them come out of prison, and
clapped their hands for joy, while the tears streamed from their eyes.
This
dreadful example of bigotry employed the pen of Voltaire in deprecation of the
horrors of superstition; and though an infidel himself, his essay on toleration
does honor to his pen, and has been a blessed means of abating the rigor of
persecution in most European states. Gospel purity will equally shun
superstition and cruelty, as the mildness of Christ's tenets teaches only to
comfort in this world, and to procure salvation in the next. To persecute for
being of a different opinion is as absurd as to persecute for having a
different countenance: if we honor God, keep sacred the pure doctrines of
Christ, put a full confidence in the promises contained in the Holy Scriptures,
and obey the political laws of the state in which we reside, we have an undoubted
right to protection instead of persecution, and to serve heaven as our
consciences, regulated by the Gospel rules, may direct.
Chapter 5 - An Account of the Inquisition