08-21-2026, 10:09 AM
VII. The Inquisition, St. Bartholomew, and the Dragonnades of the Cevennes.
A few words more about Catholic intolerance. Protestants never tire of casting up against the Catholics certain facts, which they allege as proofs to convince them of intolerance, — the Inquisition, St. Bartholomew, and the Dragonnades of the Cevennes.
These items have furnished materials for romances and plays; but writers of novelettes and plays do not profess regard for historical accuracy, and people of common sense and seekers of truth do not generally look to them for information.
1. What is, then, this Inquisition, which frightens us so much, even in these, our days? Popular romances represent it as a terrible tribunal, raised in every Catholic land, torturing poor victims in deep dungeons, and burning them at the stake, with surrounding fires never put out.
The Protestant historians, Ranke and Guizot, honorably admit that the Spanish Inquisition was only a political institution to protect the unity of Spain. The rulers of that kingdom looked upon heresy as the enemy most dangerous to the peace of their dominions, and declared it a crime of high treason against the nation. Unable to decide by themselves, or their civil courts, questions of faith, they established an ecclesiastic tribunal, charged with the examination of prisoners and with judgment on their orthodoxy. The inquisitors then acquainted the prince with the result of their examination, and the latter pronounced sentence as he deemed best.*
That institution you may value as you choose; you are at liberty to condemn the abuses and the cruelties of which it has been guilty through the violence of political passions and the character of the Spaniard; yet one cannot but acknowledge, in the terrible part taken by the clergy in its trials, the most legitimate and most natural exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Does not the examination of questions of faith belong by right divine to the Church? but what man of good faith will ever confound these acts, exclusively religious, with the office of the executioner?
But remember that the Popes have never ceased to protest against the rigors of the Spanish Inquisition, although it received no prestige whatever from their authority, it being, as we have seen, a political institution of the Spanish kingdom.
2. But you will say, "What of the Saint Bartholomew? — that frightful massacre ordered by the Church, to the sacrifice of so many Protestant lives?"
The Saint Bartholomew, even more than the Inquisition of Spain, is a political event.* Protestants rebelled against lawful authority; they had attempted to seize the person of the king, and endeavored to establish in the midst of the nation a people turbulent and revolutionary. The youthful Charles IX. and the haughty Catharine Medici, his mother, were threatened in their lives and liberty by the conspiracy of Amboise; they had to fly for their lives before that of Meaux. The leaders of the Protestant party grew more insolent every day. The queen, thus goaded, resolved to get rid of the rebels, and called to her assistance the religious excitement fanned into frenzy by the fury of the Huguenots. Religion was the pretext, but not the cause of the Saint Bartholomew. Men well read in history know it to be so in these our days; why, then, do not Protestant historians acknowledge it in good faith?
"Very well," you urge; "but did not the Pope sing a Te Deum on the occasion of that butchery?" Yes, he did; but Gregory XIII. had been deceived as to the facts. He received a hurried despatch from the French court, that a murderous attempt had been made on the lives of the king and of his family, and that they had been delivered from the hands of the Huguenots, and the assassins had been punished; whereupon the Pope went to St. Peter's and returned public thanks to God. He did not know the lamentable truth of that night. Those excesses have, however, been greatly exaggerated by the party; for after all the Protestant martyrology could not set down the number of victims, all counted, but at seven hundred and eighty-six, for all France. Because those men, in rebellion against their sovereign, had been shot down as turbulent Calvinists, is it a reason why the Catholic Church should be held accountable for their death? The whole blame of the Saint Bartholomew is therefore laid, and solely, on the machiavellian conduct of Charles IX. and Catharine Medici.
Without any purpose of excusing that which cannot be excused, we must observe that men and institutions always bear the stamp of the times. In those ages, public manners were rude and uncouth, and their character affected men and things, good and evil. Moreover the religious sentiment had a mastery over all the rest. Accordingly, Protestant violence came into collision with an excitability of faith whereof we have no idea. To it we must refer, for the most, the extreme measures which accompanied many historical facts of those days.
3. Although this asperity of manners was somewhat softened in France in the days of Louis XIV., it yet was the cause of lamentable results at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I shall not canvass here the nature of that act of Louis. But truth compels us to remember that, during the cruelties practised against the Huguenots in certain parts of the Cevennes, the king's officers went beyond the orders of their master, and they alone were guilty. Irritated at the attempt made by the Protestants to sunder the unity of the nation, to plot with strangers, to hold continued practice with England, Louis XIV. resolved upon purging France of this leaven of discord. To assert the rights of the crown, as well as those of religion, he called force to his assistance. But it is well known how Bossuet and Fenelon, however of one mind with the king, deprecated those cruel and violent measures. What, then, in the presence of these simple facts, becomes of the charges preferred by the enemies of the faith? And how can the dragonnades of the Cevennes be turned into an argument against the Church?
Here we have three facts, three political crimes, if you will, for which Protestants make the Church responsible after three hundred years. Oh! but St. Francis de Sales spoke well when, at the utterance of so many slanders against the Church by the Protestants of his own time, he compared her to the chaste Susanna, falsely accused by those men who should have been her defenders! That sainted woman, brought to the pillory, exclaimed: —
"O Eternal God, who knowest hidden things! . . . Thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me; whereas, I have done none of these things which these men have maliciously forged against me."
"And the Lord raised the spirit of young Daniel, and he cried out with a loud voice: —
"'Are ye so foolish, ye children of Israel, that, without examination or knowledge of the truth, ye have condemned a daughter of Israel?'
"And the people rose and did justice to the innocence and sanctity of the chaste Susanna." (Dan. xiii.)
A few words more about Catholic intolerance. Protestants never tire of casting up against the Catholics certain facts, which they allege as proofs to convince them of intolerance, — the Inquisition, St. Bartholomew, and the Dragonnades of the Cevennes.
These items have furnished materials for romances and plays; but writers of novelettes and plays do not profess regard for historical accuracy, and people of common sense and seekers of truth do not generally look to them for information.
1. What is, then, this Inquisition, which frightens us so much, even in these, our days? Popular romances represent it as a terrible tribunal, raised in every Catholic land, torturing poor victims in deep dungeons, and burning them at the stake, with surrounding fires never put out.
The Protestant historians, Ranke and Guizot, honorably admit that the Spanish Inquisition was only a political institution to protect the unity of Spain. The rulers of that kingdom looked upon heresy as the enemy most dangerous to the peace of their dominions, and declared it a crime of high treason against the nation. Unable to decide by themselves, or their civil courts, questions of faith, they established an ecclesiastic tribunal, charged with the examination of prisoners and with judgment on their orthodoxy. The inquisitors then acquainted the prince with the result of their examination, and the latter pronounced sentence as he deemed best.*
That institution you may value as you choose; you are at liberty to condemn the abuses and the cruelties of which it has been guilty through the violence of political passions and the character of the Spaniard; yet one cannot but acknowledge, in the terrible part taken by the clergy in its trials, the most legitimate and most natural exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Does not the examination of questions of faith belong by right divine to the Church? but what man of good faith will ever confound these acts, exclusively religious, with the office of the executioner?
But remember that the Popes have never ceased to protest against the rigors of the Spanish Inquisition, although it received no prestige whatever from their authority, it being, as we have seen, a political institution of the Spanish kingdom.
2. But you will say, "What of the Saint Bartholomew? — that frightful massacre ordered by the Church, to the sacrifice of so many Protestant lives?"
The Saint Bartholomew, even more than the Inquisition of Spain, is a political event.* Protestants rebelled against lawful authority; they had attempted to seize the person of the king, and endeavored to establish in the midst of the nation a people turbulent and revolutionary. The youthful Charles IX. and the haughty Catharine Medici, his mother, were threatened in their lives and liberty by the conspiracy of Amboise; they had to fly for their lives before that of Meaux. The leaders of the Protestant party grew more insolent every day. The queen, thus goaded, resolved to get rid of the rebels, and called to her assistance the religious excitement fanned into frenzy by the fury of the Huguenots. Religion was the pretext, but not the cause of the Saint Bartholomew. Men well read in history know it to be so in these our days; why, then, do not Protestant historians acknowledge it in good faith?
"Very well," you urge; "but did not the Pope sing a Te Deum on the occasion of that butchery?" Yes, he did; but Gregory XIII. had been deceived as to the facts. He received a hurried despatch from the French court, that a murderous attempt had been made on the lives of the king and of his family, and that they had been delivered from the hands of the Huguenots, and the assassins had been punished; whereupon the Pope went to St. Peter's and returned public thanks to God. He did not know the lamentable truth of that night. Those excesses have, however, been greatly exaggerated by the party; for after all the Protestant martyrology could not set down the number of victims, all counted, but at seven hundred and eighty-six, for all France. Because those men, in rebellion against their sovereign, had been shot down as turbulent Calvinists, is it a reason why the Catholic Church should be held accountable for their death? The whole blame of the Saint Bartholomew is therefore laid, and solely, on the machiavellian conduct of Charles IX. and Catharine Medici.
Without any purpose of excusing that which cannot be excused, we must observe that men and institutions always bear the stamp of the times. In those ages, public manners were rude and uncouth, and their character affected men and things, good and evil. Moreover the religious sentiment had a mastery over all the rest. Accordingly, Protestant violence came into collision with an excitability of faith whereof we have no idea. To it we must refer, for the most, the extreme measures which accompanied many historical facts of those days.
3. Although this asperity of manners was somewhat softened in France in the days of Louis XIV., it yet was the cause of lamentable results at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I shall not canvass here the nature of that act of Louis. But truth compels us to remember that, during the cruelties practised against the Huguenots in certain parts of the Cevennes, the king's officers went beyond the orders of their master, and they alone were guilty. Irritated at the attempt made by the Protestants to sunder the unity of the nation, to plot with strangers, to hold continued practice with England, Louis XIV. resolved upon purging France of this leaven of discord. To assert the rights of the crown, as well as those of religion, he called force to his assistance. But it is well known how Bossuet and Fenelon, however of one mind with the king, deprecated those cruel and violent measures. What, then, in the presence of these simple facts, becomes of the charges preferred by the enemies of the faith? And how can the dragonnades of the Cevennes be turned into an argument against the Church?
Here we have three facts, three political crimes, if you will, for which Protestants make the Church responsible after three hundred years. Oh! but St. Francis de Sales spoke well when, at the utterance of so many slanders against the Church by the Protestants of his own time, he compared her to the chaste Susanna, falsely accused by those men who should have been her defenders! That sainted woman, brought to the pillory, exclaimed: —
"O Eternal God, who knowest hidden things! . . . Thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me; whereas, I have done none of these things which these men have maliciously forged against me."
"And the Lord raised the spirit of young Daniel, and he cried out with a loud voice: —
"'Are ye so foolish, ye children of Israel, that, without examination or knowledge of the truth, ye have condemned a daughter of Israel?'
"And the people rose and did justice to the innocence and sanctity of the chaste Susanna." (Dan. xiii.)
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre