THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE

New Zealand Tablet, 14 August 1919, Page 3

THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE

Paper presented to the Historical Society of St Kieran's College, March, .1875, by Right Rev. Patrick F. Moran, Bishop of Ossory. . (Continued). • /■ - . 111. 'v It now only remains to make some comments on a few of the many questions which have arisen in connection'with the St. Bartholomew Massacre. 1. And. first of all it will be asked what sympathy was shown by the Government of England to their Huguenot, friends in the terrible disaster which had thus befallen them? England, during the precedingyears, had entered into secret treaties with the Huguenots, and they were publicly regarded as her allies. We would, therefore, expect that she would now avenge the St. Bartholomew outrage, or at least resent, as done to herself, the injury and insult offered to the Huguenot cause. Nothing, however, of all this occurred. A few days after the massacre the King of France commissioned his ambassador in London, La Motte Fenelon, to explain to Queen Elizabeth the peculiar circumstances of the sad e\*ent, and in obedience to these instructions he set before her Majesty that his Sovereign, quite against the royal wishes, had been compelled to act with severity against Coligny and his adherents, on account of a wicked plot they had entered into against the throne, and that if some few innocent persons had suffered with the guilty, this was owing to circumstances which his Majesty was unable to control, and which occasioned him the most heartfelt grief. Elizabeth received the Ambassador at Woodstock. The Court chronicler records that she was arrayed in the deepest mourning, and that all the lords and ladies who attended her were dressed in black. The whole sympathy, however, of England for the unfortunate dupes of her deceitful policy ended here. Amicable relations were almost immediately re-established, and the friendship of the two Courts seemed more closely cemented than ever in the blood of the Huguenots. The English Ambassador was instructed to proceed with the negotiations for the marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Duke d'Alencon, brother of Charles IX., as if nothing had occurred to mar the harmony between their respective Courts; and when, a few months later, a daughter was born to the French King, Elizabeth consented to become godmother to the infant princess. She sent the Earl of Worcester on this occasion to present a font of gold as a baptismal gift, and to assist at the ceremony of baptism in her name. * So completely, indeed, did Queen Elizabeth and the English Government seem to have" overlooked the St. Bartholomew outrage, that the Huguenots regarded their proceedings as a studied insult offered to themselves. They pushed their resentment so' far as to attack the English Ambassador whilst sailing from England to France. One of the ships in his suite was taken and plundered,, some of his attendants were slain, and he himself was, for a time, in jeopardy of his life. A little later the Marshal de Retz was sent as a special envoy from Charles to the English Court, and the report was generally credited at the time that he received an express acknowledgment from the Queen that Coligny and his associates had deserved their fate. 2. And now a few words as to the question which was warmly debated in former times, whether the St. Bartholomew massacre formed part of a long premeditated scheme of the French Court or was merely prompted by the difficulties which, in consequence of the failure of the attempt on the life -of Coligny, had suddenly beset Catherine de Medici and her friends. There are some, indeed, who go so far as to affirm that the plan for the extirpation of the Huguenots was long before arranged by the King and his council; that the honors and caresses shown to Coligny, and even the marriage of the Princess Marguerite, formed part, of the scheme, the better to lull the suspicions of the

intended victims, and to attract them to the capital. This opinion, however, .rests on no historical grounds. Everything leads to the conclusion that Coligny had acquired a real mastery over the affections of Charles IX., and it is preposterous to suppose that that young monarch, so weak and vacillating and impulsive, could have been such a master of dissimulation as to deceive Walsingham ■and the other foreign Ambassadors, as well as . his own courtiers, into the belief that'he was favorable to the Huguenots, whilst in reality he meditated their destruction. There perhaps is somewhat more of probability in the opinion that Catherine de Medici had, for some months at least, planned in her own mind this plot for cutting off the leaders of the Huguenots, and possibly she had not forgotten the remarkable advice given to her by the Duke of Alva, who, at the conference of Bayonne, in 1565, as Henry of Navarre attests, put Tarquin’s gesture into words, and counselled Catherine to rid herself of the obnoxious noblemen by the curious Spanish proverb, that “one salmon’s head is better than a hundred frogs.”* Catherine, however, was not a person to readily suppose that the Spanish statesman was disinterested in his counsel, and that his advice was solely given her in the interests of France. Whether or not, however, the Spanish proverb may have lingered in her mind, it is now generally supposed that, if any such plot existed, the Catholic leaders were likely to share in the fate of the Huguenots, and that had she been successful in the first attempt on the life of Coligny, the Duke of Guise would have been her next victim. But, now that that attempt had failed, she needed the strong arm of this brave nobleman to sustain the Government against the Huguenots, and to this instance alone he owed his safety. Be this as it may, Catherine, a few days after the massacre, avowed that she had given orders for the death only of a half-dozen of the Huguenot leaders, and that “she was responsible in conscience only for that number. ”f

For us this is not a question of great moment, and we will readily leave it to be settled by the friends and admirers of Catherine de Medici, and of the Court of Charles IX. Whether the massacre was premeditated or nob, it is manifest from the line of policy pursued by Catherine, and from the principles which guided the French Court, that the Catholic Church and the Holy See had no part in it, and are in no way responsible for its terrible excesses. Paris witnessed other bloody scenes in 1792 and 1793. Religion was not responsible for them. They were decreed by an Atheistic policy in the name of the sovereign people. The St. Bartholomew massacre was the result of an equally irreligious intrigue, although it was,;}; nominally at least, carried into execution in the interests of the Crown. It was the age of classic studies, and it is possible that amid the peculiar difficulties which now beset her, Catherine may have recalled to mind the massacre so famous in Roman literature, when Scylla sought by one blow to rid himself of ail his enemies, and, at his command, the streets of Rome on one day flowed with the blood of 6000 citizens. But whether or not this vision flitted before the mind of Catherine, it is unquestionable that the Catholic Church had as little part in the Parisian crime as in that of Scylla ; and an eloquent writer has well remarked that were a Blanche of Castile or a St. Louis on the throne of France in 1572, such a massacre would have been impossible.

3. The important question now presents itself : How was the intelligence of the St. Bartholomew massacre received in Rome? The news, as conveyed to the eternal city, was to the effect that a widespread conspiracy of the Huguenots had been discovered only a moment before their plans were matured, that their wicked designs had recoiled upon their own heads, and that the Huguenot power was now for ever broken in France. This intelligence was hailed with the greatest

delight. The city , bells rang out their merriest peals, a royal salute was given from the cannon of St. Angelo’s, the Pontiff, with the , court and 'clergy, walked in procession from the Basilica of San Marco to the French church of St. Louis,' arid the “Te Deum” .was solemnly chanted in thanksgiving. In addition to all this, a gold medal was struck to commemorate the happy event, and the whole ■’scene, by command of Pope Gregory XIII., was represented among the fresco decorations with which Yassari was then adorning the Sala Regia in the Vatican. All this, however, does not prove what the enemies of the Holy See contend, that the Sovereign Pontiff, or the citizens of Rome, gave expression to their joy for a cold-blooded massacre of the French Huguenots. To fully appreciate the course pursued by the Roman Court, we must bear in mind the official intelligence relative to the massacre, which was conveyed by Charles IX. to his Holiness. A special agent was sent to Rome, and his instructions were in substance a mere repetition of the King’s discourse in Parliament on August 26, setting forth the conspiracy of Coligny and his associates, and how their wicked attempt had recoiled on their own heads. The French agent also brought with him a letter to the Pope from Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, which attested that the Huguenots had conspired against the life of the King, the Queen Mother, the King’s brothers, and all the princes and Catholic gentlemen of their suite, “to the end that Coligny might create a king of his own religion, and abolish every other religion in the kingdom ; that, providentially, the conspiracy was discovered, and on the day they had designed to carry out their enterprise, execution fell upon them and their accomplices, so that all the chiefs of the sect, and several of the party, were slain.’’* The Nunzio, Salviati, sent at the same time a full account of the massacre, and transmitted, with it the substance of the King’s discourse in Parliament “that his Majesty, thanks to Christ, detected a plot which Admiral Caspar de Coligny had prepared against the Royal authority, so that a terrible destruction and death threatened the whole family of the King; and, therefore, he inflicted on the Admiral and his followers the punishment which they deserved.”f '

Indeed, this account was persistently repeated by the French envoys at every Court, and those who wished to maintain friendly relations with France were of necessity obliged to accept it as an ' official statement of the facts and circiynstances of the case. The Duke of Alva was at this time carrying on the siege of Mons, in the Netherlands?: when he received the official dispatch from Paris, he at once embodied it in a circular to all the Governors of the Provinces, declaring that “the Huguenots had resolved to murder the King and the Royal Family, and to seize on the government: that for this purpose Coligny had organised a body of 4000 men in the faubourg St. Germain, but, the secret being betrayed, the King, had anticipated their wicked designs and thus secured the peace of the kingdom. Four hours later the storm would have fallen upon the King and the leaders of the Catholics of France. ”J The French Ambassador in Switzerland, M. de Bellievre, was also commissioned to lay before the Swiss Diet, then assembled in Baden, the motives which prompted him to such severity against the Huguenots. His discourse on the occasion is still extant. He declares that the execution ordered by the King was an act of justice, rendered imperative by the conduct of Coligny and his associates. “They had formed a plot, he said, to introduce a dangerous tyranny into the kingdom. His Majesty therefore, seeing the imminent danger to which his crown and life were exposed, took the advice of the princes and officers of State, and with their counsel proceeded to exercise strict justice against the leading conspirators.”§ ~

We aro not, however, without direct proof that the motive of the rejoicings in the eternal city, was the providential discovery and extinction of a danger-ous-conspiracy which aimed at the lives and liberties of the Catholics of France. Soon after the news of the massacre had reached Rome, the famous Latinist, Muretus, was selected to deliver the usual sermon at one of the thanksgiving ceremonies, in presence of the Pope and the Papal Court, and his discourse has happily been preserved. A few of its sentences will suffice to set before us in its true light the whole matter of this solemn thanksgiving:—"The Huguenots (he says) did not hesitate to conspire against the life and liberty of that King, from whom, notwithstanding their atrocious deeds, they had received not only pardon, but kindness and affection. In which conspiracy, at the very time that they had marked out and decreed for carrying into effect their wicked design, the destruction which they had plotted against the King, and against almost all of the Royal House and Family, was turned upon the heads of the wicked traitors themselves. Oh ! memorable the night which, by the execution of a few seditious men, thus freed the Sovereign from imminent danger of murder, and the whole kingdom from the incessant alarms of civil war."*

With these words before us, the whole course pursued by the Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman people becomes clear and intelligible. Were the deluded conspirators Catholics instead of Huguenots, the same thanksgiving would have been offered up, that God had vouchsafed to strengthen the Most Christian King,, and to avert so great a calamity from his devoted Catholic nation. The Abbate di San Salvatore was at this time in Rome, as agent of Emanuel Filibert, Duke of Savoy. He writes to the Duke on September 5, 1572, informing him that the official news of the massacre had that day reached Rome, and was received with unbounded delight by all, “on account of the interests of the King of France, and of the kingdom and the Church being at stake.” He adds, however, and his words abundantly prove that the rejoicings in the eternal city were not the result of frenzy or savage exultation at the wilful shedding of innocent blood—that “far greater would have been the satisfaction of everyone if his Majesty could, with safety, have attained his purpose without dispensing with the formalities of law. Nevertheless, everyone returns thanks to God, being persuaded of the just intentions of his Majesty.” It would he easy to add other testimonies to prove that such was, indeed, the opinion prevalent in Rome, and such the motive of the rejoicings and thanksgiving of the Papal Court. Early in the following century the celebrated Stx'ada composed, in Rome, his Hist on of the War in Flanders. Treating of the St. Bartholomew massacre, he styles it “a signal deed and a. punishment deservedly incurred by a faction of conspirators against their Sovereign.”| Pagi, in his Life of Gregory XIII., also writes that that Pontiff viewed the massacre as a necessary act of self-defence of the French Court, and, therefore, ordered the thanksgiving: “ actis publice Deo grains'de •peric-ulo a Colinii con jurat ion e evita-to.” § There were not wanting, indeed, some special reasons why Rome should not regret that a just retribution had fallen on Coligny and his-associates. It had been for centuries the anxious care of the Roman Pontiffs to combine the Sovereigns of Europe in a holy league to check the advance of the Moslem armies. The

leaders : of : the so-called Reformation pursued a different course. Luther even went so far as to avow his desire to -enter into league with the Turks against the Catholic Powers, that thus he might in some way weaken the influence of Rome, and he publicly preached that to fight against the Turks was to war against God.* True to this evil policy of the Reformers, Coligny presented to the King, in 1572, a memorial to dissuade him from attending to the counsels of Rome, and urging him to marshal his armies against Spain rather than against the Turks, f The Huguenot leaders were also known to be in secret league with the banditti who at this time infested the several States of Italy. So numerous were these bands of freebooters, that their united strength was supposed to be a match for an army of 30,000 men. Their attacks were principally directed against the States of the Church, and their ravages often filled the citizens of Rome with alarm. By the destruction which now fell upon the Huguenots, the Italian bandits lost their chief support, and being deprived of their war material and other resources, the field soon became clear for their final overthrow. -

Notwithstanding these various motives, the Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory XIII., when freely treating of the occurrence with, his private friends, was far from approving of the St. Bartholomew massacre: he even burst into tears, and said to those around him: "Alas! how can I be sure that seme innocent souls may not have suffered with the guilty?" Maffei. the annalist of this Pontiff's reign, having stated that Coligny-s death was announced to his Holiness, as "ordered by the King, in defence of his own life and. kingdom,''J further assures that although Rome was thus freed from a sworn enemy, yet "the Pope showed a tempered joy, as when a diseased limb is cut off with pain from the body."§ Brantome's testimony is equally conclusive; he writes thus: "Touching the joy and content the good and holy Pope showed concerning the massacre, I heard from a man of honor who was then in Rome, and who knew the matter well, that when the news was brought him ho shed tears, not for joy, as men ordinarily do in such cases, but through grief: and when some of those who were present remonstrated that he should weep and be sad on the news of the good execution of wicked men, enemies of God and of his Holiness, 'Ah!' he said, 'I weep at the course which the King has pursued, illegal and forbidden by God, to inflict punishment in such a manner, and I fear lest the like shall fall, and that before long, upon himself. I also weep because, among so many victims, as many innocent as guilty may have fallen.' " (To be concluded next week.)

* Camden, page 275 : Dc Thou, iii., 244 : Castlenau, tom. xlvi., 55 : Lingard, vi., 142.

* Davila, lib. 3 : Mathieu, Hist, dc France, i., 283 ; White, page 262. + Ranke, Hist de la Papaute, iii., 83. 1 “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572, was the diabolical ■work of the Queen, Catherine de Medici, to maintain her political power.”Seehohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution (Longmans,. 1874), page 211.

* This letter is published from the Vatican Archives, in continuation of the Annals of Baronins, by Theiner, vol. i., page 336. + Theiner, i., 45. 1 This document was discovered. in 1842, in the State Archives of Mons, and was read by M. Gachard for the Academy of Sciences, in Brussels, on June 4, 1842. § MSS. National, St. , Germain, 1247. '

eriti non sunt adversus illius regie caput a c salutem conjura re, a quo, post tot atrocia facinora, non modo venimn consecuti erant, sod ctiam henigne et amanter cxcepti. Qua conjurationc svh id ip sum tent pus, quod patron do sceleri dicatum ac coustitutum est, in illorum scclcratorum ac foedifragorum capita id quod ip si in regem et in totam j trope domuin ac stirpem regiam machinahantur. O noctern illqm memorahilem, quae paucorum seditiosorutn intcritu regent a praesenli caedis pcriculo, regnvm a perpetua civilium hello mm fonnidine liberavit. . . . O diem deni quo ilium plenum laetitiae et hilaritatis, quo tu, Tieatissime Pater, hoc ad to nuncio allcto, Deo immortali et divo Ludovico regi, cujus haec in ipso pervigilio cvencrant, gratias acturus, indicias a to supplicationes pedestris ohiisti. Quis optnhilior ad nuncius adferri poterat? out nos ipsi quod felicius.optare potcramus principium Pontificaius tui, quant ut primis illius mensihus tetrain caliph tent, quasi exorto sole, discussant cerneremus.” (Opera Mureti, tom. i., page 197. edit. Ruhnken.) + Archivio Storico Italiano, appendix, tom. iii. page 169. 1 “Insigna facinus sed meritum conjuratae in regem jaciiom supplirium.” —Strada, De Bello Bclgico, lib. vii., page 250. . § Brer. .Gest. Rom. Pontif., vi., 729. ;-A ;:

* Among tho propositions which Luther refused to retract at the "Diet of Worms. 1521. was the following, viz. : "Proeliari advcrsus Turcas est. rcpugnare Deo." (Opera Luthcri, torn, ii., page 3.) Audin, Life oj Luther, page 174. +Do Thou, torn, vi., page 34. The Calvinists continued for a long time to pursue tho same policy. Even under Loui3 XIV. their great preacher, Jurieu, declared that tho Turks had received a divine mission to co-operate with tho Reformers in the groat work of tho Gospel : "pour travaillcr avec les Reformer, au grand csuvre de Dieu." ; "Per sicureeza della sua persona e quictc del regno." § Maffei, Annali, lib. i., sec. 20. ** Brantome, Mcmoircs de I'Amiral de Cliutitton, torn, viii., pago 176. mm iilii ;