FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS
Edited by William Byron Forbush
CHAPTER IV
Papal Persecutions
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.
Persecution of 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 information, 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.
Persecutions of the Albigenses
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.
The Bartholomew Massacre at Paris, etc.
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
enemy 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.
From the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to the French Revolution, in 1789
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 practiced 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.
Martyrdom of John Calas
We pass over many other individual martyrdoms 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.
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