156 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
1590), an Augustinian monk who had been converted by reading the works of the Reformers under the direction of Vermigli at Lucca, and became one of the most learned and acute champions of the Calvinistic system. He fled to the Grisons in 1551, and preached at Chiavenna. Two years later he accepted a call to a Hebrew professorship at Strassburg. There he got into a controversy with Marbach on the doctrine of predestination, which he defended with logical rigor.^ In 1563 he returned to Chiavenna as pastor. He had much trouble with restless Italian refugees and with the incipient heresy of Socinianism. In 1568 he left for Heidelberg, as professor of theology on the basis of the Palatinate Catechism, which in 1563 had been introduced under the pious Elector Frederick III. He prepared the way for Calvinistic scholasticism. A complete edition of his works appeared at Geneva, 1619, in three folio volumes.
Chiavenna had several other able pastors, — Simone Florillo, Scipione Lentulo of Naples, Ottaviano Meio of Lucca.
Small Protestant congregations were founded in the Valtellina, at Caspan (1546), Sondrio (the seat of government), Teglio, Tirano, and other towns. Dr. McCrie says : " Upon the whole, the number of Protestant churches to the south of the Alps appears to have exceeded twenty, which were all served, and continued till the end of the sixteenth century to be for the most part served, by exiles from Italy."
But Protestantism in Chiavenna, Bormio, and the Valtpllina was at last swept out of existence. We must here anticipate a bloody page of the history of the seventeenth century.
Several causes combined for the destruction of Protestantism in Upper Italy. The Catholic natives were never friendly to the heretical refugees who settled among them, and called them banditi, which has the double meaning of exile and outlaw. They reproached the Grisons for receiving them
^ Schweizer, Centraklogmen der Ref. Kirche, I. 422 sqq.
§ 39. THE VALTELLINA MA.SSACKE. 157
after they had been expelled from other Christian countries. They were kept in a state of political vassalage, instead of being admitted to equal rights with the three leagues. The provincial governors were often oppressive, sold the subordinate offices to partisans, and enriched themselves at the expense of the inhabitants. The Protestants were distracted by internal feuds. The Roman Counter-Reformation was begun with great zeal and energy in Upper Italy and Switzerland by the saintly Cardinal Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan. Jesuits and Capuchins stirred up the hatred of the ignorant and superstitious people against the Protestant heretics. In the Grisons themselves the Roman Catholic party under the lead of the family of Planta, and the Protestants, headed by the family of Salis, strove for the mastery. The former aimed at the suppression of the Reformation in the leagues as well as the dependencies, and were suspected of treasonable conspiracy with Spain and Austria. The Protestant party held a court (Strqff/eriehf, a sort of tribunal of inquisition) at Thusis in 1618, which included nine preachers, and condemned the conspirators. The aged Zambra, who in the torture confessed complicity with Spain, was beheaded ; Nicolaus Rusca, an esteemed priest, leader of the Spanish Catholic interests in the Valtellina, called the hammer of the heretics, was cruelly tortured to death ; Bishop John Flugi was deposed and outlawed ; the brothers Rudolf and Pompeius Planta, the knight Jacob Robustelli, and other influential Catholics were banished, and the property of the Plantas was confiscated.
These unrighteous measures created general indignation. The exiles bred revenge, and were assured of Spanish aid. Robustelli returned, after his banishment, to the Valtellina, and organized a band of about three hundred desperate bandits from the Venetian and Milanese territories for the overthrow of the government of the Grisons and the extermination of Protestantism.
158 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
This is the infamous " Valtellina Massacre " ( VeltUner Mord') of July, 1620. It may be called an imitation of the Sicilian Vespers, and of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was the fiendish work of religious fanaticism combined with political discontent. The tragedy began in the silence of the night, from July 18th to 19th, by the murder of sixty defenceless adult Protestants of Tirano ; the Podesta Enderlin was shot down in the street, mutilated, and thrown into the Adda ; Anton von Salis took refuge in the house of a Catholic friend, but was sought out and killed; the head of the Protestant minister, Anton Bassa of Poschiavo, was posted on the pulj^it of the church. The murderers proceeded to Teglio, and shot do^vn about the same number of persons in the church, together with the minister, who was wounded in the pulpit, and exhorted the hearers to persevere ; a number of women and children, who had taken refuge in the tower of the church, were burnt. The priest of Teglio took part in the bloody business, carrying the cross in the left, and the sword in the right hand. At Sondrio, the massacre raged for three days. Seventy-one Protestants, by their determined stand, were permitted to escape to the Engadin, but one hundred and forty fell victims to the bandits; a butcher boasted of having murdered eighteen persons. Not even the dead were spared ; their bodies were exhumed, burnt, thrown into the water, or exposed to wild beasts. Paula Baretta, a noble Venetian lady of eighty years, who had left a nunnery for her religious conviction, was shamefully maltreated and delivered to the Inquisition at Milan, where a year afterward she suffered death at the stake. Anna of Libo fled with a child of two years in her arms ; she was overtaken and promised release on condition of abjuring her faith. She refused, saying, "You may kill the body, but not the soul " ; she pressed her child to her bosom, and received the death-blow. When the people saw the stream of blood on the market-place before the chief