EXTINCTION OF WALDENSES IN CALABRIA.
Arrival of Inquisitors in Calabria--Flight of the Inhabitants
of San Sexto--Pursued and Destroyed--La Guardia--Its
Citizens Seized--Their Tortures--Horrible Butchery--The
Calabrian Colony Exterminated--Louis Paschale--His
Condemnation--The Castle of St. Angelo--The Pope, Cardinals,
and Citizens--The Martyr--His Last Words--His Execution--His
Tomb.
While Paschale was calmly awaiting a martyr’s death in his dungeon at
Rome, how fared it with his flock in Calabria, on whom the gathering
storm had burst in terrific violence?
When it was known that Protestant ministers had been sent from Geneva
to the Waldensian Churches in Calabria, the Inquisitor-General, as
already mentioned, and two Dominican monks, Valerio Malvicino and
Alfonso Urbino, were dispatched by the Sacred College to reduce
these Churches to the obedience of the Papal See, or stamp them out.
They arrived at San Sexto, and assembling the inhabitants, assured
them it was not intended to do them any harm, would they but dismiss
their Lutheran teachers and come to mass. The bell was rung for the
celebration of the Sacrament, but the citizens, instead of attending
the service, left the town in a body, and retired to a neighbouring
wood. Concealing their chagrin, the inquisitors took their departure
from San Sexto, and set out for La Guardia, the gates of which they
locked behind them when they had entered, to prevent a second flight.
Assembling the inhabitants, they told them that their co-religionists
of San Sexto had renounced their errors, and dutifully attended mass,
and they exhorted them to follow their good example, and return to the
fold of the Roman shepherd; warning them at the same time, that should
they refuse they would expose themselves, as heretics, to the loss of
goods and life. The poor people, taken unawares, and believing what
was told them, consented to hear mass; but no sooner was the ceremony
ended, and the gates of the town opened, than they learned the deceit
which had been practised upon them. Indignant, and at the same time
ashamed of their own weakness, they resolved to leave the place in a
body, and join their brethren in the woods, but were withheld from
their purpose by the persuasion and promises of their feudal superior,
Spinello.
The Inquisitor-General, Alexandrini, now made request for two companies
of men-at-arms, to enable him to execute his mission. The required
aid was instantly given, and the soldiers were sent in pursuit of the
inhabitants of San Sexto. Tracking them to their hiding-places, in the
thickets and the caves of the mountains, they slaughtered many of them;
others, who escaped, were pursued with bloodhounds, as if they had been
wild beasts. Some of these fugitives scaled the craggy summits of the
Apennines, and hurling down the stones on the soldiers who attempted to
follow them, compelled them to desist from the pursuit.
Alexandrini dispatched a messenger to Naples for more troops to quell
what he called the rebellion of the Vaudois. The viceroy obeyed the
summons by coming in person with an army. He attempted to storm the
fugitives, now strongly entrenched in the great mountains, whose
summits of splintered rock, towering high above the pine forests that
clothe their sides, presented to the fugitives an almost inaccessible
retreat. The Waldenses offered to emigrate; but the viceroy would
listen to nothing but their return within the pale of the Church of
Rome. They were prepared to yield their lives rather than accept peace
on such conditions. The viceroy now ordered his men to advance; but the
shower of rocks that met his soldiers in the ascent hurled them to the
bottom, a discomfited mass, in which maimed and dying were confusedly
mingled with the corpses of the slain.
The viceroy, seeing the difficulty of the enterprise, issued an edict
promising a free pardon to all bandits, outlaws, and other criminals
who might be willing to undertake the task of scaling the mountains
and attacking the strongholds of the Waldenses. In obedience to this
summons, there assembled a mob of desperadoes, who were but too
familiar with the secret paths of the Apennines. Threading their way
through the woods, and clambering over the great rocks, these assassins
rushed from every side on the barricades on the summit, and butchered
the poor Vaudois. Thus were the inhabitants of San Sexto exterminated,
some dying by the sword, some by fire, while others were torn by
bloodhounds or perished by famine.[89]
While the outlaws of the Neapolitan viceroy were busy in the mountains,
the Inquisitor-General and his monks were pursuing their work of
blood at La Guardia. The military force at their command not enabling
them to take summary measures with the inhabitants, they had recourse
to stratagem. Enticing the citizens outside the gates, and placing
soldiers in ambush, they succeeded in getting into their power
upwards of 1,600 persons.[90] Of these, seventy were sent in chains
to Montalto, and tortured, in the hope of compelling them to accuse
themselves of practising shameful crimes in their religious assemblies.
No such confession, however, could the most prolonged tortures wring
from them. “Stefano Carlino,” says M’Crie, “was tortured till his
bowels gushed out;” and another prisoner, named Verminel, “was kept
during eight hours on a horrid instrument called the _hell_, but
persisted in denying the atrocious calumny.”[91] Some were thrown from
the tops of towers, or precipitated over cliffs; others were torn with
iron whips, and finally beaten to death with fiery brands; and others,
smeared with pitch, were burned alive.
But these horrors pale before the bloody tragedy at Montalto, enacted
by the Marquis di Buccianici, whose zeal was quickened, it is said,
by the promise of a cardinal’s hat to his brother if he would clear
Calabria of heresy. One’s blood runs cold at the perusal of the deed.
It was witnessed by a servant to Ascanio Caraccioli, himself a Roman
Catholic, and described by him in a letter, which was published in
Italy, along with other accounts of the horrible transaction, and has
been quoted by M’Crie. “Most illustrious sir, I have now to inform you
of the dreadful justice which began to be executed on these Lutherans
early this morning, being the 11th of June. And, to tell you the truth,
I can compare it to nothing but the slaughter of so many sheep. They
were all shut up in one house as in a sheep-fold. The executioner
went, and bringing out one of them, covered his face with a napkin,
or _benda_, as we call it, led him out to a field near the house, and
causing him to kneel down, cut his throat with a knife. Then, taking
off the bloody napkin, he went and brought out another, whom he put to
death after the same manner. In this way the whole number, amounting
to eighty-eight men, were butchered. I leave you to figure to yourself
the lamentable spectacle, for I can scarcely refrain from tears while
I write; nor was there any person, after witnessing the execution of
one, could stand to look on a second. The meekness and patience with
which they went to martyrdom and death are incredible. Some of them at
their death professed themselves of the same faith with us, but the
greater part died in their cursed obstinacy. All the old met their
death with cheerfulness, but the young exhibited symptoms of fear. I
still shudder while I think of the executioner with the bloody knife in
his teeth, the dripping napkin in his hand, and his arms besmeared with
gore, going to the house, and taking out one victim after another, just
as a butcher does the sheep which he means to kill.”[92] Their bodies
were quartered, and stuck up on pikes along the high road leading from
Montalto to Château-Vilar, a distance of thirty-six miles.
Numbers of men and women were burned alive, many were drafted off to
the Spanish galleys, some made their submission to Rome, and a few,
escaping from the scene of these horrors, reached, after infinite toil,
their native Valleys, to tell that the once-flourishing Waldensian
colony and Church in Calabria no longer existed, and that they only had
been left to carry tidings to their brethren of its utter extermination.
Meanwhile, preparations had been made at Rome for the trial of Jean
Louis Paschale. On the 8th of September, 1560, he was brought out of
his prison, conducted to the Convent della Minerva, and cited before
the Papal tribunal. He confessed his Saviour, and, with a serenity to
which the countenances of his judges were strangers, he listened to the
sentence of death, which was carried into execution on the following
day.
Standing upon the summit of the Janiculum Mount, vast crowds could
witness the spectacle. In front the Campagna spreads out its once
glorious but now desolated bosom; and winding through it like a thread
of gold is seen the Tiber, while the Apennines, sweeping round it in
craggy grandeur, enclose it like a vast wall. Immediately beneath,
uprearing her domes and monuments and palaces, with an air that seems
to say, “I sit a queen,” is the city of Rome. Yonder, asserting an
easy supremacy amid the other fabrics of the Eternal City, is the
scarred and riven yet Titanic form of the Coliseum, with its stains of
early Christian blood not yet washed out. By its side, the partner of
its guilt and doom, lies the Palatine, once the palace of the world’s
master, now a low mound of ruins, with its row of melancholy cypresses,
the only mourners on that site of vanished glory and fallen empire.
Nearer, burning in the midday sun, is the proud cupola of St. Peter’s,
flanked on the one side by the buildings of the Inquisition, and on the
other by the huge Mole of Hadrian, beneath whose gloomy ramparts old
Tiber rolls sluggishly and sullenly along. But what shout is this which
we hear? Why does Rome keep holiday? Why do all her bells ring? Lo!
from every street and piazza eager crowds rush forth, and uniting in
one overwhelming and surging stream, they are seen rolling across the
Bridge of St. Angelo, and pressing in at the gates of the old fortress,
which are thrown wide open to admit this mass of human beings.
Entering the court-yard of the old castle, an imposing sight meets
the eye. What a confluence of ranks, dignities, and grandeurs! In
the centre is placed a chair, the emblazonry of which tells us that
it claims to rise in authority and dignity over the throne of kings.
The Pontiff, Pius IV., has already taken his seat upon it, for he has
determined to be present at the tragedy of to-day. Behind his chair, in
scarlet robes, are his cardinals and counsellors, with many dignitaries
besides in mitres and cowls, ranged in circles, according to their
place in the Papal body. Behind the ecclesiastics are seated, row on
row, the nobility and beauty of Rome. Plumes wave, stars gleam, and
seem to mock the frocks and cowls gathered near them, whose wearers,
however, would not exchange these mystic garments for all the bravery
that blazes around them. The vast sweep of the Court of St. Angelo is
densely occupied. Its ample floor is covered from end to end with a
closely-wedged mass of citizens, who have come to see the spectacle.
In the centre of the throng, rising a little way over the sea of human
heads, is seen a scaffold, with an iron stake, and beside it a bundle
of faggots.
A slight movement begins to be perceptible in the crowd beside the
gate. Some one is entering. The next moment a storm of hissing and
execration salutes the ear. It is plain that the person who has just
made his entrance is the object of universal dislike. The clank of
irons on the stone floor of the court, as he comes forward, tells how
heavily his limbs are loaded with fetters. He is still young; but
his face is pale and haggard with suffering. He lifts his eyes, and
with countenance undismayed surveys the vast assembly, and the dismal
apparatus that stands in the midst of it, waiting its victim. There
sits a calm courage on his brow; the serene light of deep, untroubled
peace beams in his eye. He mounts the scaffold, and stands beside
the stake. Every eye is now turned, not on the wearer of the tiara,
but on the man who is clad in the sanbenito. “Good people,” says the
martyr--and the whole assembly keep silence--“I am come here to die for
confessing the doctrine of my Divine Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Then turning to Pius IV. he arraigned him as the enemy of Christ,
the persecutor of his people, and the Anti-Christ of Scripture, and
concluded by summoning him and all his cardinals to answer for their
cruelties and murders before the throne of the Lamb. “At his words,”
says the historian Crespin, “the people were deeply moved, and the Pope
and the cardinals gnashed their teeth.”[93]
[Illustration: GROUP OF ROMAN PEASANTS.]
The inquisitors hastily gave the signal. The executioners came round
him, and having strangled him, they kindled the faggots, and the flames
blazing up speedily reduced his body to ashes. For once the Pope had
performed his function. With his key of fire, which he may truly claim
to carry, he had opened the celestial doors, and had sent his poor
prisoner from the dark dungeons of the Inquisition, to dwell in the
palace of the sky.
So died, or rather passed into the life eternal, Jean Louis Paschale,
the Waldensian missionary and pastor of the flock in Calabria. His
ashes were collected and thrown into the Tiber, and by the Tiber
they were borne to the Mediterranean. And this was the grave of the
preacher-martyr, whose noble bearing and undaunted courage before
the Pope himself gave added value to his splendid testimony for the
Protestant cause. Time may consume the marble, violence or war may drag
down the monumental pile;
“The pyramids that cleave heaven’s jewelled portal;
Elëan Jove’s star-spangled dome; the tomb
Where rich Mausolus sleeps--are not immortal.”[94]
But the tomb of the far-sounding sea to which the ashes of Paschale
were committed, with a final display of impotent rage, was a nobler
mausoleum than ever Rome raised to any of her Pontiffs.