The History of Christianity by John S. C. Abbott (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📖

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.

HE 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