THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
Principles of the two Parties.――Ferdinand’s Appeal to the Pope.
――The Celibacy of the Clergy.――Maximilian.――His Protection of
the Protestants.――The Reformation in France.――Jeanne d’Albret,
Queen of Navarre.――Proposed Marriage of Henry of Navarre and
Marguerite of France.――Perfidy of Catharine de Medici.――The
Nuptials.――The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.――Details of its
Horrors.――Indignation of Protestant Europe.――Death of Charles IX.
THE Papal party was mainly a political party, consisting of those
who were rioting in possession of despotic power. They considered
the Protestant religion as peculiarly hostile to despotism in the
encouragement it afforded to education, to the elevation of the masses,
and to the diffusion of those principles of fraternal equality which
Christ enjoined. The Catholic religion was considered the great bulwark
of kingly power, constraining, by all the terrors of superstition, the
benighted multitudes to submit to civil intolerance.
Ferdinand I., brother of Charles V., was king of the two realms of
Hungary and Bohemia. He devoted all his energies to eradicating the
doctrines of the Reformation from his domains: the most rigorous
censorship of the press was established, and no foreign work,
unexamined, was permitted to enter his realms; the fanatic order of
Jesuits was encouraged by royal patronage, and intrusted with the
education of the young.
Still Protestantism was making rapid strides through Europe. It had
become the dominant religion in Denmark and Sweden, and was firmly
established in England by the accession of Elizabeth to the throne:
in France, also, the reformed religion had made extensive inroads,
gathering to its defence many of the noblest in rank and intellect in
the realm: in Spain and Portugal, the terrors of the Inquisition had
checked the progress of religious truth.
Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, as Archduke of Austria,
inherited the Austrian States, and thus became virtually the founder of
the Austrian monarchy. The majority of the inhabitants of the Austrian
States had become Protestants. They were so strong in intelligence,
rank, and numbers, that Ferdinand did not dare to attempt to crush
them with a merciless hand; though he threw every obstacle he could in
the way of Protestant worship, forbidding the circulation of Luther’s
translation of the Bible. The Protestants insisted that communicants at
the Lord’s Supper should receive both the bread and the wine: this the
Papal court vehemently rejected. Ferdinand was in favor of granting
this concession: he wrote to the pope,――
“In Bohemia, no persuasion, no argument, no violence, not even arms and
war, have succeeded in abolishing the use of the wine as well as the
bread in the sacrament. If this is granted, they may be re-united to
the Church; but, if refused, they will be driven into the party of the
Protestants. So many priests have been degraded by their diocesans for
administering the sacrament in both kinds, that the country is almost
deprived of priests. Hence children die or grow up to maturity without
baptism; and men and women of all ages and of all ranks live, like the
brutes, in the grossest ignorance of God and of religion.”
The celibacy of the clergy was another point upon which the Protestants
were at issue with the Papal councils. Upon this subject Ferdinand
wrote to the pope in the following very sensible terms:――
“If a permission to the clergy to be married cannot be granted, may
not married men of learning and probity be ordained, according to the
custom of the Eastern Church; or married priests be tolerated for a
time, provided that they act according to the Catholic or Christian
faith? And it may be justly asked whether such concessions would
not be far preferable to tolerating, as has unfortunately been done,
fornication and concubinage. I cannot avoid adding, what is a common
observation, that priests who live in concubinage are guilty of greater
sin than those who are married; for the last only transgress a law
which is capable of being changed, whereas the first sin against a
divine law which is capable of neither change nor dispensation.”
The pope, thus pressed by the importunity of Ferdinand, reluctantly
consented to the administration of the cup to the laity in his
domains, but resolutely refused to tolerate the marriage of the clergy.
Ferdinand was so chagrined by this obstinacy, which rendered any
conciliation between the antagonistic parties in his State impossible,
that he was thrown into a fever, of which he died on the 25th of July,
1564.
The eldest son of Ferdinand succeeded to the throne of the Austrian
monarchy with the title of Maximilian II. He appears to have been
a truly good man,――a sincere disciple of Jesus, of enlarged and
cultivated mind. Though he adhered nominally to the Catholic faith,
he was the consistent and self-sacrificing friend of the Protestants.
Before his accession to the crown he appointed a clergyman of the
Protestant faith for his chaplain, and received the sacrament in both
kinds from his hands. When warned that by such a course he could never
hope to win the imperial crown of Germany, he replied,――
“I will sacrifice all worldly interests for the sake of my salvation.”
His father threatened to disinherit him if he did not renounce all
connection with the Protestants.
But this noble man, true to the teachings of his conscience, would not
allow the loss of a crown to induce him to swerve from his faith. In
anticipation of disinheritance, and banishment from the kingdom, he
wrote to the Protestant elector palatine,――
“I have so deeply offended my father by maintaining a Lutheran preacher
in my service, that I am apprehensive of being expelled as a fugitive,
and hope to find an asylum in your court.”
Though Maximilian, upon succeeding to the throne, maintained in his
court the usages of the Papal Church, he remained the kind friend of
the Protestants, ever seeking to shield them from persecution, claiming
for them a liberal toleration, and endeavoring in all ways to promote
fraternal religious feeling throughout his domains.
The prudence of Maximilian greatly allayed the bitterness of religions
strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with
the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants. In
France particularly, the conflict raged with merciless fury. John
Calvin soon became the recognized head of reformation there.
Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, was a Protestant. Her husband was a
Catholic. They had one son,――Henry, subsequently Henry IV. of France.
Gradually the strife between Catholics and Protestants became so fierce,
that all Europe was in arms,――the Catholics combining to annihilate
the Protestants, the Protestants arming for self-protection. Anthony
of Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, the husband of the Queen of Navarre,
and father of Henry IV., abandoned his Protestant wife and his child,
and placed himself at the head of the Catholic armies. The Queen of
Navarre, the most illustrious Protestant sovereign on the Continent,
was then recognized as the head of the Protestant armies. Henry, her
son, following the example of his noble Christian mother, espoused the
same cause.
The kingdom of Navarre, a territory of wild ravines and majestic
swells of land, often rising into towering mountains upon the northern
slope of the Pyrenees, bordered France upon the south: its annexation
to France was deemed important by the French court. An impotent,
characterless, worthless boy, Charles IX., was nominally king of France:
his mother, the infamous Catharine de Medici, was the real sovereign.
She was as fanatical, as cruel, as wicked a woman as ever breathed.
History, perhaps, records not another instance where a mother did
every thing in her power to plunge her own son into every species of
debauchery, that she might enfeeble him in body and in mind, so as to
enable her to retain the supreme power.
This vile woman had a daughter, Marguerite, as infamous as herself.
That Navarre might be annexed to France, the plan was formed of uniting
in marriage Henry and Marguerite, the heirs of the two thrones. The
scheme was formed by the statesmen of the two countries. Henry and
Marguerite, though thoroughly detesting each other, made no objection
to the arrangement, which would promote their mutual ambition. The
marriage-tie had no sacredness for either of them. Catharine was
delighted with the arrangement; for she had formed the plan of inviting
all the leaders of the Protestant party to Paris to attend the nuptials,
and there to assassinate them. Out of respect to their devoted friend,
the Protestant Queen of Navarre, and her Protestant son, they would
be all likely to attend. The leaders being all thus assembled in Paris,
she would have them entirely at her disposal. Then, having cut off
the leaders, in the consternation which would ensue, she would, by a
wide-spread conspiracy, have the Protestant population throughout all
France――men, women, and children――put to death.
With measureless hypocrisy, feigning the highest satisfaction in
prospect of the union of the Catholics and the Protestants, Catharine
sent very affectionate messages to the nobles, and all the men of
prominence of the reformed faith, begging that there might be no more
hostility between them. She entreated them to attend the nuptials,
and assured them of the high gratification with which she contemplated
the marriage of her daughter with a Protestant prince, who was thus
destined to become king of France.
While plotting the details of perhaps the most horrible massacre
earth has ever known, she did every thing in her power to lull her
unsuspecting victims into security. The Queen of Navarre and her
son were invited to the Castle of Blois to make arrangements for the
wedding. They were received by Catharine, and her weak, depraved son,
Charles IX., with extravagant displays of affection. The Protestant
nobles and influential clergy flocked to Paris. The Admiral Coligni,
one of the most illustrious of men in all excellences of character,
was received as the special guest of the king and his mother. He was
unquestionably the most influential man in the Protestant party in
France. His death would prove an irreparable blow to the cause of
reform. Some of his friends urged him not to place himself in the
power of so treacherous a woman as Catharine de Medici.
“I confide,” said the noble admiral, “in the sacred word of his
Majesty.”
The admiral, as he entered the palace, was greeted with lavish caresses
by both mother and son. The king threw his arms around the admiral’s
neck, and hugged him in an Iscariot embrace, saying, “This is the
happiest day of my life.”
At length, the nuptial morn arrived. It was the 15th of August, 1572.
The unimpassioned bridegroom led his scornful bride to the Church of
Notre Dame. Before the massive portals of this renowned cathedral, and
beneath the shadow of its venerable towers, a magnificent platform had
been reared, canopied with gorgeous tapestry. Hundreds of thousands
thronged the surrounding amphitheatre, swarming at the windows, and
crowding the balconies and the house-tops.
The gentle breeze, breathing over the multitude, was laden with the
perfume of flowers. Banners, pennants, and ribbons, of every varied hue,
waved in the air, or hung in gay festoons from window to window, and
from roof to roof.
Upon that conspicuous platform Henry received the hand of the haughty
princess, and the nuptial oath was administered. Marguerite however,
even in that hour and in the presence of all those spectators, gave
a ludicrous exhibition of her girlish petulance and her ungoverned
wilfulness. When, in the progress of the ceremony, she was asked if
she willingly received Henry of Navarre for her husband, a sudden freak
of perversion seized her. She pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud
little head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit
of Marguerite was now up, and all the powers of Europe could not give
pliancy to the shrew.
The question was again repeated. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon
the officiating bishop, and, refusing by word or gesture to give the
slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment
and delay ensued. There was a pause in the ceremony; and every eye was
fixed, in wonder as to what would be the result.
Suddenly the king, Marguerite’s brother, who with his court was
conspicuously seated upon the platform, fully conscious of his sister’s
indomitable spirit, quietly walked up to the termagant at bay, and
placing one hand upon her bosom, and the other upon the back of her
head, compelled an involuntary nod. The bishop smiled and bowed, and
acting upon the politic principle, that small favors are gratefully
received, proceeded with the ceremony. Such were the vows with which
Henry of Navarre and Marguerite of France were united. Such is too
often love in the palace.
We must now pass by the festival-days which ensued, and turn from
the nuptials to the massacre. Admiral Coligni, anxious to return home,
called at the Louvre to take leave of the king. As he was passing
through the streets to the lodgings which had been provided for him,
two bullets from the pistol of an assassin pierced his body. His
friends bore him bleeding to his apartment. Though the king and queen
feigned great indignation, the evidence was conclusive that they had
instigated the crime. The Protestants were thunderstruck. All their
leaders had been lured to Paris; and there they were,――caught in a trap,
unarmed, separated from their followers, and helpless. Henry of Navarre
immediately hastened to the bedside of his revered and wounded friend.
While he was sitting there, Catharine and Charles were deliberating
whether Henry himself should be included in the general massacre. After
much debate, it was decided to spare him, as he would be powerless
after all the Protestants were cold in death.
The Duke of Guise led the movement of the Catholics. Troops had been
stationed at all the important positions in Paris, and the Catholic
population had been secretly armed. The Catholics were enjoined to
wear a white cross upon the hat, that they might be distinguished. The
conspiracy extended throughout the whole of France, and the storm of
death was to burst at the same moment upon the unsuspecting victims in
every city and village of the kingdom.
While Catharine and Charles were arranging the details for the
massacre, they employed all their arts of duplicity to disarm suspicion.
The very evening of the fatal night, the king invited many of the most
illustrious of his victims to a sumptuous entertainment at the Louvre.
In a fine glow of spirits he detained them until a late hour with his
pleasantries, and induced several to remain in the palace to sleep,
that they might be slain beneath his own roof.
The conspiracy had been kept a profound secret from Marguerite, lest
she should betray it to her husband. In the mean time, aided by the
gloom of a starless night, preparations were making in every street
of Paris for the enormous perpetration. Soldiers were assembling
at their appointed rendezvouses. Guards were stationed to cut off
flight. Fanatic men, armed with sabres and muskets which gleamed in
the lamplight, began to emerge through the darkness, and to gather in
motley assemblage. Many houses were illuminated, that, by the blaze
from the windows, the bullet might be thrown with precision, and the
dagger might strike an unerring blow.
Catharine and her son Charles were now in one of the apartments of
the Louvre, waiting for the clock to strike the hour of two, when
the signal was to be given. Catharine, inexorable in crime, was very
apprehensive that her son might relent. Petulant and self-willed, he
was liable to paroxysms of stubbornness, when he spurned his mother’s
counsels.
Weak as well as depraved, the wretched king was feverishly excited.
He paced the room nervously, peering out at the window, looking at
his watch, wishing yet dreading to have the appointed hour arrive. His
mother, witnessing these indications of a faltering spirit, urged him
to order the alarm-bell immediately to be struck, which was to be the
signal for the massacre to commence. Charles hesitated, and a cold
sweat oozed from his brow.
“Are you a coward?” tauntingly inquired the fiend-like mother.
This is a charge which no coward can stand. It almost always nerves
the poltroon to action. The young king nervously exclaimed, “Well,
then, let it begin!” There were in the room at the time only Catharine,
Charles, and his brother, the Duke of Anjou. It was two hours after
midnight. There was a moment of dreadful suspense and of perfect
silence. All three stood at the window, in the Palace of the Louvre,
looking out into the rayless night.
Suddenly through the still air the ponderous tones of the alarm-bell
fell upon the ear, and rolled the knell of death over the city. The
vibration awakened the demon in ten thousand hearts. It was the morning
of the sabbath, Aug. 24, 1572,――the anniversary of the festival of
St. Bartholomew.
The first stroke of the bell had not ceased to vibrate upon the ear
when the uproar of the carnage commenced. The sound, which seemed to
rouse Catharine to frenzy, almost froze the blood of the young monarch.
Trembling in every nerve, he shouted for the massacre to be stopped.
It was too late: the train was fired. Beacon-fires and alarm-bells
sent the signal with the rapidity of light and of sound through entire
France. The awful roar of human passion, the crackling of musketry, the
shrieks of the wounded and of the dying, blended in appalling tumult
throughout the whole metropolis. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless
infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten down mercilessly to the
fanatic cry of “Vive Dieu et le Roi!”――“Live God and the King!”
The Admiral Coligni, who had been shot and desperately wounded the
day before, faint and dying, was lying upon his bed, surrounded by a
few faithful friends, as the demoniac clamor rolled in upon their ears.
The Duke of Guise, a fanatic Papist, with three hundred followers,
hastened to the lodgings of the admiral, stabbed the sentinels, and
burst through the gates. A wounded servant rushed to the chamber of
the admiral, exclaiming,――
“The house is forced; and there are no means of resisting!”
“I have long,” said the heroic Christian admiral, “prepared myself to
die. Save yourselves if you can: you cannot defend me. I commend my
soul to God.”
The murderers were now rushing up the stairs. They pursued, shot,
stabbed, and cut down the flying friends of Coligni. The admiral, thus
for a moment left alone, rose from his bed, and, being unable to stand,
leaned against the wall, and, in fervent prayer, surrendered himself
to the will of his Maker. The assassins burst into the room. They saw
a venerable man in his night-robe, with bandaged wounds, engaged in his
devotions.
“Art thou the admiral?” demanded one with brandished sword.
“I am,” replied Coligni; “and thou, young man, shouldst respect my gray
hairs. Nevertheless, thou canst abridge my life but a little.”
The wretch plunged his sword into the bosom of Coligni, and then,
withdrawing it dripping with blood, cut him down. The admiral fell,
calmly saying,――
“If I could but die by the hand of a gentleman, instead of by the hands
of such a knave as this!”
The rest of the assassins immediately fell upon him, each emulous to
bury his dagger in the bosom of his victim. The Duke of Guise, ashamed
to encounter the eye of the noble Coligni, whom he had often met in
friendly intercourse, remained impatiently in the courtyard below.
“Breme!” he shouted to one of his followers, looking up to the window,
“have you done it?”
“Yes,” Breme replied: “he is done for.”
“Let us see, though,” replied the duke: “throw him out of the window!”
The mangled corpse fell heavily upon the paving-stones. The duke
wiped the blood from the lifeless face, and, carefully scrutinzing the
features, said, “Yes: I recognize the man.” Then, giving the pallid
face a kick, he exclaimed, “Courage, comrades! we have happily begun.
Let us now go for others.”
The tiger, having once lapped his tongue in blood, seems to be imbued
with a new spirit of ferocity. There is in man a similar temper:
the frenzied multitude became drunk with blood. The houses of the
Protestants were marked. The assassins burst open the doors, and rushed
through all apartments, murdering indiscriminately young and old,――men,
women, and children. The gory bodies were thrown from the windows, and
the pavements were clotted with blood.
Charles soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and, conscious
that it was too late to draw back, with fiend-like eagerness engaged
himself in the work of death. Fury seized him: his cheeks were flushed,
his lips compressed, and his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly
from his window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins.
Grasping a gun, he watched like a sportsman for his prey; and when he
saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying from his
pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his palace,
and shout with exultation as he saw him fall pierced by his bullet.
A crowd of fugitives rushed into the courtyard of the Louvre to throw
themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his own
body-guard into the yard with guns and daggers to butcher them all.
Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, oppressed with fears of
she knew not what, retired to her chamber. She had hardly closed her
eyes when the outcry of the pursuers and the pursued filled the palace.
She sprang up in her bed, and heard some one struggling at the door,
and shrieking “Navarre! Navarre!”
The door was burst open; and one of her husband’s attendants rushed
in, covered with wounds and blood, and pursued by four soldiers of her
brother’s guard. The captain of the guard at that moment entered the
room, pursuing his victim.
Marguerite, almost insane with terror, fled to the chamber of her
sister. The palace was filled with shouts and shrieks and uproar. As
she was rushing through the hall, she encountered another Protestant
gentleman flying before the crimsoned sword of his pursuers: he was
covered with blood flowing from many ghastly gashes. Just as he reached
the young Queen of Navarre, his pursuer plunged a sword through his
body; and he fell dead at her feet.
No tongue can tell the horrors of that night: it would require volumes
to detail its scenes. While the carnage was in progress, a body of
soldiers entered the chamber of Henry of Navarre, and conveyed him
to the presence of the king. The imbecile monarch, with blasphemous
oaths and a countenance inflamed with fury, ordered him to abandon
Protestantism, or prepare to die. Henry, to save his life, ingloriously
yielded, and, by similar compulsion, was induced to send an edict to
his own dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion but that
of Rome.
When the gloom of night had passed, and the sabbath sun dawned upon
Paris, a spectacle was witnessed such as even that blood-renowned
metropolis has seldom presented. The city still resounded with tumult;
the pavements were gory, and covered with the dead; men, women, and
children were still flying in every direction, wounded and bleeding,
pursued by merciless assassins, riotous with demoniac laughter, and
drunk with blood.
The report of guns and pistols, and of continued volleys of musketry,
from all parts of the city, proved the universality of the massacre.
Miserable wretches, smeared with blood, swaggered along with ribald
jests and fiend-like howlings, hunting for the Protestants; corpses,
torn and gory, strewed the streets, and dissevered heads were spurned
like footballs along the pavements; priests in sacerdotal robes, and
with elevated crucifixes, urged their emissaries not to grow weary in
the work of exterminating God’s enemies; the most distinguished nobles
of the court and of the camp rode through the streets with gorgeous
retinue, encouraging the massacre.
“Let not one single Protestant be spared,” the king proclaimed, “to
reproach me hereafter with this deed.”
Charles, with his mother and the high-born profligate ladies who
disgraced the court, emerged in the morning light in splendid array
into the reeking streets. Many of the women contemplated with merriment
the dead bodies piled up before the Louvre. One of the ladies, however,
appalled by the spectacle, wished to retire, alleging that the bodies
already emitted an offensive odor. Charles brutally replied,――
“The smell of a dead enemy is always pleasant!”
The massacre was continued in the city and throughout the kingdom for
a week. On Thursday, after four days spent in hunting out the fugitives
from all their hiding-places, the Catholic clergy paraded the streets
of Paris in a triumphal procession, and with jubilant prayers and hymns
gave thanks to God for their victory. The Catholic pulpits resounded
with exultant harangues. A medal was struck off in honor of the event,
with the inscription, “La Piété a réveille la Justice,”――“Religion has
awakened Justice.”
In some of the distant provinces in France, the Protestants were in
the majority; and the Catholics did not venture to attack them. In some
others they were so few that they were not feared, and were therefore
spared. In the sparsely-settled rural districts, the Catholic peasants,
kind-hearted and virtuous, refused to imbrue their hands in the blood
of their neighbors. In these ways, several thousand Protestants escaped.
But in nearly all the cities and populous towns the slaughter was
indiscriminate and universal. The number who perished in the awful
massacre of St. Bartholomew is estimated at from eighty to a hundred
thousand.
But there were some noble Catholics, who, refusing to surrender
conscience to this iniquitous order of the king, laid down their own
lives in adhering to the principle, that they would “obey God rather
than man” when God’s law and man’s law came into antagonism.
The governor of Auvergne, an heroic and a noble man, replied in the
following terms to the king’s secret missive commanding the massacre:――
“Sire, I have received an order, under your Majesty’s seal, to put all
the Protestants of this province to death; and, if (which God forbid!)
the order be genuine, I still respect your Majesty too much to obey
you.”
The infamous decree of the king was sent to the Viscount Orthez,
commandant at Bayonne. The following was his intrepid reply:――
“Sire, I have communicated the commands of your Majesty to the
inhabitants of the town, and to the soldiers of the garrison; and I
have found good citizens and brave soldiers, _but not one executioner_.
On which account, both they and I humbly beseech your Majesty to employ
our arms and our lives in enterprises in which we can _conscientiously
engage_. However perilous they may be, we will willingly shed therein
the last drop of our blood.”
Both of these men of intrepid virtue soon after suddenly and
mysteriously died. Few entertained a doubt that poison had been
administered by the order of Charles.
From these revolting scenes of blood let us briefly glance at the
impression which the massacre of St. Bartholomew produced upon Europe.
The pope received the tidings with exultation, and ordered the most
imposing religious ceremonies in Rome in gratitude for the achievement.
The Papal courts of Spain and of the Netherlands sent thanks to Charles
and Catharine for having thus effectually purged France of heresy.
But Protestant Europe was stricken with indignation. As fugitives
from France, emaciate, pale, and woe-stricken, recited, in England,
Switzerland, and Germany, the story of the massacre, the hearts of
their auditors were frozen with horror.
In Geneva, a day of fasting and prayer was instituted, which is
observed to the present day. In Scotland, every church resounded with
the thrilling tale. John Knox proclaimed, in language of prophetic
nerve,――
“Sentence has gone forth against that murderer, the King of France; and
the vengeance of God will never be withdrawn from his house. His name
shall be in everlasting execration.”
The French court, alarmed by the foreign indignation it had aroused,
sent an ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth with a poor apology
for the crime. The ambassador was received by England’s queen with
appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were studiously made to
invest the occasion with solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning,
and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and
sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The ambassador, overwhelmed
by this reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself,――
“I am ashamed to acknowledge myself a Frenchman!”
He entered, however, the presence of the queen; passed through the
long line of silent courtiers, who refused to salute him even with a
look; stammered out his miserable apology; and, receiving no response,
retired covered with confusion.
It has been said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
There are apparent exceptions to this rule. Protestantism in France has
never recovered from this blow. But for this massacre, one-half of the
nobles of France would have continued Protestant. The reformers would
soon have constituted so large a portion of the population, that mutual
toleration would have been necessary. Intelligence would have been
diffused; religion would have been respected; and, in all probability,
the horrors of the French Revolution would have been averted.
God is an avenger. In the mysterious government which he
wields,――mysterious only to our feeble vision,――“he visits the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children even unto the third and
fourth generation.”
As we see the priests of Paris and of France, during the awful tragedy
of the Revolution, massacred in the prisons, shot in the streets, hung
upon the lamp-posts, and driven in starvation and woe from the kingdom,
we cannot but remember the day of St. Bartholomew. The 24th of August,
1572, and the 2d of September, 1792, though far apart in the records of
time, are consecutive days in the government of God.
Henry of Navarre, by stratagem, soon escaped from Paris, renounced the
Catholicism which he had accepted from compulsion, and was accepted
as the military leader of the Protestant party throughout Europe. The
surviving Protestants rallied in self-defence, and implored aid from
all the courts which had embraced the principles of the Reformation.
England and Germany sent troops to their aid. Catholic Spain, the
Netherlands, and Italy sent armies to assist the Papists. Again France
was deluged in the woes of civil war, and years of unutterable misery
darkened the realm.
Charles IX., as weak as he was depraved, became silent, morose, and
gloomy. Secluding himself from all society, month after month he was
gnawed by the scorpion fangs of remorse. A bloody sweat, oozing from
every pore, crimsoned his bedclothes. His aspect of misery drove
all companionship from his chamber. He groaned and wept, exclaiming
incessantly,――
“Oh, what blood! oh, what murders! Alas! why did I follow such evil
counsels?”
He saw continually the spectres of the slain with ghastly wounds
stalking about his bed; and demons, hideous and threatening, waited to
grasp his soul. As the cathedral bell was tolling the hour of midnight
on the 30th of May, 1574, his nurse heard him convulsively weeping.
Gently she drew aside the bed-curtains. The dying monarch turned his
dim and despairing eye upon her, and exclaimed,――
“O my nurse, my nurse! what blood have I shed! what murders have I
committed! Great God, pardon me, pardon me!”
A convulsive shuddering for a moment agitated his frame: his head
fell upon his pillow, and the wretched man was dead. He was then but
twenty-four years of age. He expressed satisfaction that he left no
heir to live and suffer in a world so full of misery.
The order of knighthood deserves record, as one of the outgrowths of
Christianity. This institution, originating in the eleventh century,
was continued through several hundred years as one of the most potent
of earthly influences. Guizot, speaking of its origin, says,――
“It was at this period when in the laic world was created and developed
the most splendid fact of the middle ages,――knighthood, that noble
soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue
and soldierly honor. It is impossible to trace in detail the origin and
history of that grand fact, which was so prominent in the days to which
it belonged, and which is so prominent still in the memories of men;
but a clear notion ought to be obtained of its moral character, and of
its practical worth.”[212]
The young candidate for knighthood was first placed in a bath,――the
symbol of moral and material purification. After having undergone a
very thorough ablution, he was dressed in a white tunic, a red robe,
and a close-fitting black coat. The tunic was the emblem of purity; the
red robe, of the blood he was bound to shed in the service of his order;
and the black coat was a reminder of death, to which he, as well as all
others, was doomed. Thus purified and clothed, the candidate underwent
a rigid fast for twenty-four hours. He then, it being evening, entered
a church, usually accompanied by a clergyman, and passed the whole
night in prayer.
The next morning, after a full confession of his sins, he received
from the father-confessor the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. A sermon
was then preached to him directly, usually in the presence of a large
assembly, enforcing the duties of the new life of knighthood upon which
he was about to enter. The candidate then approached the altar with
a sword suspended at his side. The officiating priest took the sword,
implored God’s blessing upon it, and returned it to the young man. The
young knight then kneeled before his sovereign, or the lord of high
degree, who was to initiate him into the honors of knighthood; and the
following questions were proposed to him:――
“Why do you purpose to become a knight? If it be that you may become
rich, or to take your ease, or to acquire honor, without performing
deeds worthy of renown, you are unworthy of the sacred order.”
The young man replies, “I desire to acquit myself honorably of all the
noble deeds of knighthood, without regard to wealth or ease.”
A number of beautiful ladies then approached the candidate: and one
buckled upon his feet the spurs; another girded around his chest the
coat of mail; a third placed upon his breast the cuirass; a fourth
brought the highly-polished and glittering helmet; while a fifth
presented him the armlets and gauntlets. Thus clothed by the fair hands
of ladies, he again kneeled at the altar; and his sovereign, or the
officiating lord, supported by a splendid retinue of veteran knights,
approached him, and, giving him three slight blows with the flat of the
sword, said, “In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I make
thee knight. Be valiant, bold, and true.”
The young man, thus arrayed as a knight, went from the church, and
mounted a magnificent horse held by a groom. Brandishing both sword and
lance, he displayed to the assembled multitude the wonderful feats of
horsemanship to which he had been trained.
Such was, in brief, the ceremony in the admission of knights. It will
be seen that the religious element entered largely into its spirit.
Indeed, the knight took a solemn oath to serve God religiously, and to
die a thousand deaths rather than ever renounce Christianity. A poet
of the fourteenth century, in verses upon the character and duties of
knighthood, in the following lines shows us what was then understood to
be the true elevation of knighthood:――
“Amend your lives, ye who would fain
The order of the knights attain;
Devoutly watch, devoutly pray;
From pride and sin, oh! turn away;
Be good and true; take nought by might;
Be bold, and guard the people’s right:
This is the rule for the gallant knight.”
This institution, which manifestly sprang from Christianity, exerted a
powerful influence, amid the anarchy and barbarism of the middle ages,
in rectifying disorders, and in protecting the weak against the strong.