SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S
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SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S
just cause to fear some sinister event". In this
series of contradictor^' instructions may be detected
the ever-slumbering antagonism between Catherine [^s
fixedness of purpose and the vacillation of Charles IX,
but almost even,'where in the country the pohcy of
bloodshed prevailed.
The general opinion throughout France was that the king had to kill Cohgny and the turbulent in self- defence. President dc Thou publicly praised Charles IX; Attorney-General du Faur de Pibrac wrote an apologj' for the massacre; Jodelle, Baif, and Daurat, poets of the "Pleiade", insulted the admiral in their verse; a suit w:is entered in the Parlement against Co- hgny and his accomplices whether living or dead, and its immediate result was the hanging of Briquemaut and Cavaignes, two Protestants who had escaped the massacre. This protracted severity on the part of the Parlement of Paris set the pace for outside places, and in many places an excess of zeal led to an in- crease of brutality. Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Rouen all had their massacres. So many Lyonese corpses drifted down the Rhone to Aries that, for three months, the Arlesians did not want to drink the river water. At Bayonne and at Nantes compliance with royal orders was refused. The intervals between these massacres prove that on the first day the Court did not issue formal orders in all directions; for in- stance, the Toulouse massacre did not occur till 23 September and that of Bordeaux till 3 October. The number of victims in the provinces is unknown, the figures varj-ing between 2000 and 100,00<). The "Martyrologe des Huguenots", published in 1581, brings it up to 15,138, but mentions only 786 dead. At any rate only a short time afterwards the re- formers were preparing for a fourth civil war.
From the foregoing considerations it follows: (1) That the royal decision of which the St. Bartholomew massacre was the outcome, was in nowise the result of religious disturbances and, strictly, did not even have religious incentives; the massacre was rather an en- tirely political act committed in the name of the im- moral principles of Machiavellianism against a faction that annoyed the Court. (2) That the massacre it- self was not premeditated; that, up to 22 August, Catherine de' Medici had only considered— and that for a long time — the possibility of getting rid of Co- ligny; that the criminal attack made on Coligny was interpreted by the Protestants as a declaration of war, and that, in the face of impending danger, Catherine forced the irresolute Charles IX to consent to the horrible massacre. Such, then, are the conclusions to be kept in view when entering upon the discussion of that other question, the responsibility of the Holy See.
The Holy See and the Massacre. — A. Pius V (1566-May 1, 1572). — Pius V, being constantly in- formed in regard to the civil wars in France and the massacres and depredations there committed, looked upon the Huguenots as a party of rebels who weak- ened and divided the French Kingrlom just when Christianity required the stn-ngtli of unity in order to strike an effective blow against the Turks. In 1569 he haA sent Charles IX 6fKX) men under the command of Sforza, Count of Santa-Fiore, to help the royal troops in the third religious war; he had rejoiced over the victory at Jamac (12 March, 1569), and on 28 March had written to Catherine de' Medici: "If Your Majesty continues openly and freely to fight (aperte ac libere) the enemi(^s of the Catholic Church unU) their uiU'S destruction, divine help will never fail you." Aftfjr the Battle of Moncontour in October, 1569, he harl bfgged the king fh^nfieforth to tolerate in his states the exercise of Catholicism only; "other- wise," he said, "your kingdom will be the bloody Rcene of continual sedition". The peace conclufled in 1570 Ixitween Charlr« IX and the Huguenots caused him grave anxiety. He had endeavoured to diflsuade the king from signing it and had written aa
follows to the Cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine:
"The King will have more to fear from the hidden
traps and knavishness of the heretics than from their
barefaced brigandage during the war. " What Pius V
wanted was an honest, open war waged by Charles IX
and the Guises against the Huguenots. On 10 May,
1567, he said to the Spanish Ambassador, Don Juan de
Luniga : ' ' The mastere of France are meditating some-
thing which I can neither advise nor approve and
which conscience upbraids: they want to destroy by
underhand means the Prince of Conde and the Ad-
miral. " To re-establish political peace and religious
unity by the royal sword was the inexorable dream of
Pius V who must not be judged according to our mod-
ern standards of toleration; but this end, worthy as he
deemed it, could not justify the proposed means of at-
tainment; he would sanction no intriguing, and five
years previous to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's
Day, he disapproved the dishonest "means" by
which Catherine dreamed of getting rid of Coligny.
B. Cardinal Alcssandrino, sent from the Holy See to Paris, in 1572. — Some historians have wondered whether Cardinal Alcssandrino, sent by Pius V to Charles IX in February, 1572, to persuade the king to join a Catholic league against the Turks, was not an accomplice in Catherine's murderous designs. In February Alcssandrino, who had vainly endeavoured to prevent the marriage of Margaret of Valois with the Protestant Henry of liourbon, closed his report with these words: "I am leaving France without accom- plishing anything whatever: I might as well not have come. " Let us be mindful of this tone of discourage- ment, this acknowledgement of failure. In March he wrote: "I have other special matters to report to His Holiness but I shall communicate them orally. . . ." When the cardinal returned to Rome Pius V was dy- ing, and he expired without learning what were the "special matters" to which Alcssandrino had alluded. Whatever they may have been they certainly have no bearing upon the conclusion that Pius V had been pre- viously informed of the massacre. A life of this pon- tiff, published in 15S7 by Girolamo Catena, gives a conversation that took place a long time afterwards between Alcssandrino and Clement VIII in which the cardinal spoke of his former ambassadorship. When he was endeavouring to dissuade the king from Mar- garet's marriage to Henry, the king said: " I have no other means of revenging myself on my enemies and the enemies of God. " This fragment of the interview has furnished those who hold that the massacre was premeditated with a reason for maintaining that the solemnizing of the nuptials in Paris was a snare pre- arranged with the concurrence of the papal nuncio. The most reliable criti(^s contest the perfect authentic- ity of this interview, cliiefly because of the very tardy account of it and of its utter incompatibility with the discourag(!ment manifested in Alessandrino's notes written the day after the conversation had taken place. The arguments against tlic thesis of premedi- tation as we have considered them one by one, seem to us sufficiently plausil^le to permit us to exclude all hypothesis according to which, six months ahead of time, Alcssandrino was confidentially apprised of the outrage.
C. Salviati, Nuncio at Paris in 1572. — At the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Salviati, a rela- tive of Catherine de' Medici, was the pope's nuncio at Paris. In December, 1571, Phis V ha!d entrusted him with a first extraorrlinary mission, and at the time Catherine, according to what was subsequently re- latcfl by the Venetian Ambassador, MichiU'li, "had secretly barle him tell Pins V that he would soon see the vc!ngeanc<' that .she iiiid the king would visit upon those of the r.-ligion (of the Huguenots)". Catherine's conversation was so vague that tli<! following summer, when Salviati came back to France as nuncio, she thought he must have forgotten her words. Ac-
