FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

Martyrdom of John Calas

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.