00 : ORIENTATION.
_ death-penalty of heretics; on the contrary he mentions three passages which favor toleration of heretics, 2'Tim. 2: 24; 1 Cor. 11: 19; Matt. 13: 29, 30, and then tries to deprive them of their force by his argument drawn from the guilt of heresy.
The persecution of heretics reached its height in the papal crusades against the Albigenses under Innocent III., one of the best of popes; in the dark deeds of the Spanish Inquisition ; and in the unspeakable atrocities of the Duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands during his short reign (1567—1573)."
The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing his image, an avenging angel and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages.”
1 Gibbon asserts that “the number of Protestants who were executed [by the Spaniards] in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and in the Roman empire.” — Decline and Fall, Ch. xvi., towards the close. Grotius, to whom he refers, states that the number of Dutch martyrs exceeded 100,000; Sarpi reduces the number to 50,000. Alva himself boasted that during his six years’ rule as the agent of Philip II., he had caused 18,000 persons to be executed, but this does not include the much larger number of those who perished by siege, battle, and in prisons. At the sack of Haarlem, 300 citizens, tied two and two and back to back, were thrown into the lake, and at Zutphen 500 more, in the same manner, were drowned in the Yssel. See Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. II. 504: “The barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities are almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by the thousands; and whole populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise.”
7See De Thou, Hist. lib. LXIII.; Gieseler, ΕΥ̓. 304 (Am. ed.); Wachler, Die Pariser Bluthochzeit, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1828; Henry White, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, N. Y., 1868; Henry M. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots, New York, 1879; Henri Bordier, La Saint-Barthélemy et la Critique moderne, Paris, 1879; H. Baumgarten, Vor der Bartholomeusnacht, Strassburg, 1882.’ The number of victims of that massacre in Paris and throughout France, is variously stated from 10,000 to 100,000; De Thou and Ranke give 20,000 as the most moderate estimate (2,000 in Paris). Roman Catholic writers defend the pope on the ground of ignorance; but he had abundant time to secure full information from his nuncio and others before the medals were struck. It is said that Philip II. of Spain, for the first time in his life, laughed aloud when he heard of the massacre.
§ 11. PROTESTANTISM AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 57
The infamous dragonnades of Louis XIV. were a continuation of the same politico-ecclesiastical policy on a larger scale, aiming at the complete destruction of Protestantism in France, in violation of thesolemn edict of his grandfather (1598, revoked 1685), and met the full approval of the Roman clergy, including Bishop Bossuet, the advocate of Gallican liberties.’
The most cruel of the many persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in the valleys of Piedmont took place in 1655, and shocked by its boundless violence the whole Protestant world, calling forth the vigorous protest of Cromwell and inspiring the famous sonnet of Milton, his foreign secretary :
_ “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones.”
These persecutions form the darkest, we may say, the satanic chapters in church history, and are a greater crime against humanity and Christianity than all the heresies which they in vain tried to eradicate.
The Roman church has never repented of her complicity with these unchristian acts. On the contrary, she still holds the principle of persecution in connection with her doctrine that there is no salvation outside of her bosom. The papal Syllabus of 1864 expressly condemns, among the errors of modern times, the doctrine of religious toleration.?, Leo XIII, a great admirer of
1 See the French histories of Martin, Benoit, Michelet, De Félice, Ranke, Soldan, Von Polenz, and other works quoted by H. M. Baird in Schaff-Herzog II., 1037. The number of French refugees is estimated as high as 800,000; Baird reduces it to 400,000. Martin thinks, that taking all in all, “ France lost the activity of more than a million of men, and of the men that produced most.” Many of the descendants of the refugees whom the Elector Frederic William of Prussia so hospitably invited to Berlin, fought against France in the Napoleonic wars, and aided in the terrible retribution of 1870.
? Among the errors condemned are these, 3 X., 78 and 79: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other modes of worship.” “ Whence it has been wisely provided by law, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own worship.” The condemnation of tolera-