2. Medium
explanation
Excerpts
from:
Christ the King : Lord of
History
by, Anne W. Carroll, pages
244-251.
Philip was crowned king of Spain
in 1556. … In thanksgiving to God, Philip began the construction
of a monastery-palace in honor of St Lawrence … This building
symbolizes Philip's character strong, unostentatious, centered
on Christ. It contains his “throne”—a simple canvas stool under
a painting of the Crucifixion, and the magnificent basilica
where he would slip in quietly to pray as he bore the great
burdens of his office. …
[After Philip’s wedding] Philip
took his gentle, lovely wife [Isabel of Valois] home, leaving
France under the rule of Francis II and Mary Stuart, assisted by
the Guises.
Calvinism had made strong
headway among French aristocrats (though the majority of the
ordinary French people held to the Catholic Church), as nobles
saw the new religion as a means of wresting political power from
the crown and from the Catholic nobility. With Henry II dead and
a weak, young king on the throne, the Huguenots (French
Calvinists) under the leadership of Admiral Coligny saw an
opportunity to seize power. In March 1560 came the shadowy plot
known as the Conspiracy or Tumult of Amboise, in which certain
Huguenots—probably with Cecil's connivance and with the support
of Calvin himself, who had said that it was lawful to slay those
who hindered the preaching of Calvinism—attempted to kidnap
Francis and murder the Guises. They hoped to control Francis and
influence him to be Calvinist. The plot was uncovered and the
head of the Guise family, Duke Francis, moved against the
ringleaders.
Furious at the failure of their
plot, and encouraged by Cecil, who urged them to make good use
of
“their
pen and weapons,”
the Huguenots began the Wars of
Religion in France, sweeping the country with a wave of
diabolical anti-Catholic atrocities during 1561 Churches were
devastated; nuns and priests were scourged and killed; the tombs
of saints were violated. At Montpellier the Huguenots sacked 60
churches and killed 150 priests and monks. The famous monastery
of Cluny, from which had come the great reform of the Church in
the tenth and eleventh centuries, was looted. All that remained
of two of France's most famous saints, Irenaeus of Lyons and
Martin of Tours, was thrown into the Loire River, the incorrupt
body of St Francis of Paola was taken from its tomb, dragged
through the streets and burned.
By this time, Francis II had
died; and Catherine d'Medici, Henry II's widow, was ruling in
the name of the young Charles IX. …
Catherine would wield power for
thirty years, manipulating her children as so many pawns on a
chessboard, seeking power for herself and her family, putting
personal gain ahead of the rights of the Church.
Catherine was already
well-practiced in defying the Church Forced into a political
marriage at 14 (to further Francis I's ambitions in Italy), she
had felt her position threatened because she had borne no
children after ten years of marriage. Prayers and pilgrimages
had not relieved her barrenness. So she turned from God to a
power she felt could get things done more efficiently witchcraft
and devil worship. On January 19, 1544, Francis was born, and
Catherine bore a child a year for the next decade.
But no one can defy the laws of
God without eventually suffering the consequences. And the
consequences for the children Catherine bore were frightening to
behold: Francis, dead before he was 17, his brain half-rotted
away; Isabel, a loving and loyal wife to Philip, but dead in her
early 20's; Claude, crippled from birth and welcoming her death
at 27; Louis, Jean, Victor, all dead within a year of their
baptisms Charles, insane and dead at 24; Hercule, stunted and
misshapen, dead at 30; Marguerite, so beautiful that men
traveled hundreds of miles simply to look at her, yet never able
to bear children and pursuing a life of immorality with terrible
energy until she grew old and sick and ugly and returned to the
God her mother had forsaken; Henri, greedy, perverted,
assassinated in his 38th year.
No one can sin except through
his own free will choice, but sometimes the innocent suffer
because of the sins of others. Catherine's children were
responsible for their own souls, but each one of them suffered
because of their mother's sins. And so, tragically, did France.
Following close upon Calvinist
gains in France, Cecil begin stirring up trouble in the Low
Countries (also known as the Netherlands, or Holland and
Belgium). William of Orange, who took favors from Philip and
promised loyalty, plotted against him behind his back with Cecil
and Coligny. The Protestant nobles were against Philip for
religious reasons primarily, but they also wanted political
freedom and complete control of the wealth of the Low Countries.
In 1566 a group of the noblemen came before Margaret of Parma,
Philip's governor in the Netherlands, with insolent demands. One
of her companions said, “Don't be afraid of these beggars,” so
the next time they came dressed in rags. Their rebellion is
therefore sometimes called the Revolt of the Beggars. Margaret
was willing to consider such of their requests as were
reasonable and Philip himself had made concessions, but they
were not willing to compromise: they wanted Spain and the
Catholic Church out of the Netherlands.
On August 16, 1566, the great
cathedral of Antwerp was gutted by a Calvinist mob. They began
by smashing the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that had been
carried in solemn procession the preceding Sunday; they chopped
off the heads of statues of Christ with axes and transfixed
other images and pictures of Christ with swords; they assaulted
a great old crucifix, which displayed the two thieves between
whom Christ was crucified, leaving untouched the thieves, but
hacking the form of Christ to pieces. They smashed stained glass
windows and the great organ, and stole and defiled the vessels
and plate. From Antwerp the destruction spread all over the Low
Countries, until in the incredibly short time of six weeks the
churches in more than 400 towns and villages had been sacked. In
Antwerp alone more than 25 churches were devastated in the one
terrible night of August 16-17. …
Meanwhile in France, Catherine
d'Medici, who of course had sent no aid in response to the
Pope's call for a crusade against the Turks, was becoming
fearful that the Huguenots were gaining too much power over
Charles, as her son came to rely more on Coligny and less on his
mother. On August 22, 1572, Catherine tried to have Coligny
assassinated, but the assassin failed and only wounded hint
Catherine now feared that her son would find out her involvement
in the assassination attempt. So she deliberately provoked
Charles—whose mind was unbalanced—into an insane rage, so that
he ordered the murder of all the Huguenot leaders in Paris.
Catherine and Henri of Guise, Duke Francis' son, drew up the
list. On August 24, the feast of St. Bartholomew, soldiers of
the French king systematically struck down the Huguenot
leaders. But having unleashed the violence, Charles and
Catherine were unable to stop it, and the soldiers ran wild,
killing nearly 5,000 Huguenots, including women and children, in
what is known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. This
atrocity gave the Calvinists further anti-Catholic propaganda,
though Catherine had ordered the killings not for the sake of
the Church but to increase her own power.
Christ the King : Lord of History
by, Anne W. Carroll
Christ the King : Lord of History by, Anne W. Carroll. This is
my favorite because it is a one volume text and extremely easy to
read. It is very interesting because Anne Carroll gets into the
character of important individuals through history so that the
reader really gets to know them.
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3. Long
Detailed explanation
A Detailed Account
with extensive footnotes in the book to document the
facts.
Excerpts from:
The Cleaving of Christendom, A
History of Christendom, by Warren H. Carroll,
Front Royal, VA:
Christendom Press, 2000, pages 362 - 371. The footnotes
are not provided on this website.
[Defending
The Bride webmaster's paraphrasing added in brackets in
purple text.]
[O]n April 1 a 25-ship fleet of Dutch Calvinist pirates calling
themselves “Sea Beggars” descended upon the defenseless coastal
town of Brill and captured it. They celebrated their victory by
sacking all the churches in the town and torturing 13 priests to
death. Their commander, Count Lumey de la Marck, an adherent of
William of Orange, decided to remain, fortify and defend the
town, and use it as his new base of operations … The next month
the “Sea Beggars” similarly took the port of Enkhuizen on the
Zuyder Zee, and Cecil sent a memorandum to Queen Elizabeth on
the necessity of giving large-scale support to them.
20
…
On June 6 Coligny [the French Calvinist
political and military leader and Admiral] rode into
Paris with a bodyguard of 300 horsemen, the Catholic Parisians
watching in hostile silence as he rode through their streets,
“already a legend, with his
grey beard, his toothpick, his cold, masterful and
gloomy eye.” On the 19th the
royal council met and heard Coligny call for all-out
support of the Calvinist rebels in the Low Countries and full
alliance with William of
Orange, arguing that the risk of war with Spain could be taken
because Spain was
overextended and not as strong or as dangerous as many
believed. Bishop Jean
Morvilliers of Orleans replied for the Catholics, saying
that the majority of the
people of the Low Countries were not Calvinists or rebels
and would not welcome the
French, that war with
Spain would
be long and
bloody and
very costly. On June 26 Coligny's proposal was rejected.2I
Coligny was defiant,
telling King Charles IX to his face:
I may no longer oppose your will, but I am certain that
you will be sorry for it.
However that may be, Your Majesty will not think it amiss if,
having promised the Prince of Orange aid and support, I do my
best to furnish him with both, with the help of all my friends,
relatives and servants and even, if need be, with my own person.22
[Catherine
de Medici, the Queen Mother, was eager
to avoid war with Spain however the Calvinist Admiral Coligny
was strongly in favor of it. He promised
to contribute 15,000 foot and 4,000 horse from his Calvinist
associates. On the
other hand, Catherine de Medici insisted “there
shall be no war.”]
Coligny left the meeting in cold
anger, Catherine in mortal fear of him and of French Calvinist
power.25
Catherine was
already in touch with Anne d'Este, widow of Duke Francis
of Guise,
who had subsequently married the Italian Duke of Nemours. The
whole Guise family remained convinced that Coligny had planned the
assassination of Duke Francis nine years before. Anne d'Este had been
devoted to her magnificent
first husband. She was the granddaughter of Lucrezia Borgia
and had the Italian spirit of
vendetta. On August 17 Catherine met with her
again. There is good reason
to believe that the two women, probably in
collaboration with other
members of the Guise family, now decided to use
Charles de Louviers, Sieur
de Maurevert, who had already tried to kill Coligny in
1569 and had taken service with the Guises, to assassinate him.
…
[The
assassination attempt failed.]
It is clear that Charles IX
knew nothing of the plot, since
his first action on learning of
it was to prohibit citizens from taking up arms and to
command Catholics living close to the house where Coligny was
taken for medical care, to give up their houses to his
Protestant attendants.27
King Charles showed great
anger at the assassination attempt and pledged Coligny
protection. …
According to a reliable report
from a physician of Mantua in Italy, who had no stake in either
party in France, soon after the wounding of Coligny (probably
the day of the attack on him or the following day) a group of
them met in a room just below his under the leadership
of his son-in-law Téligny and
decided to bring up a force of 4,000 cavalry by August 26
and seize the Louvre palace, where they would kill everyone they
believed had advised or promoted the attempted assassination,
notably the Dukes of Guise and Nevers, and possibly some members
of the royal family as well. … Charles later said he was told
on the 23rd that Calvinists were marching on Paris and intended
to seize him in the Louvre that very night, while Catherine de
Medici said she received three separate letters
warning that the Calvinists
had decided to kill her, the king, and all the court.
The frightened young king and
his equally frightened mother met with the royal council on the
afternoon of the 23rd, discussed the danger with them, and
decided to strike first by killing about thirty of the Calvinist
leaders then in Paris, including the wounded Coligny. Marguerite
of Navarre later said in her memoir that on that evening
Catherine revealed to Charles IX for the first time that she had
been involved in the plot to kill Coligny, and that this could
be exposed if the Calvinist leaders were not silenced. Other
evidence confirms her statement.
28 …
An hour or two before dawn,
Duke Henry of Guise and about a hundred men went to carry out
the killings of Calvinist leaders ordered by the king and
council. They went first to the house where the wounded Coligny
was staying … [T]he wounded admiral … faced a Czech ruffian
named Simanowitz armed with a pike. From his bed Coligny
addressed him “Young man, you should respect my old age and my
infirmity.” Simanowitz’s response was to run him through with
his pike and then throw him out of a window (“defenestration,”
the traditional method of killing important people in Bohemia).
Below on the pavement, Duke Henry of Guise bent over to make
sure the battered body was indeed Coligny's, kicked him in the
face, and then let his men hack him to pieces. As he left the
area, perhaps in answer to murmurs or questions, Duke Henry
shouted: “It is the king's command!” Almost certainly he meant
that killing Coligny had been the king’s command, which was
true. But those in the rapidly gathering crowd outside Coligny’s
house understood him to mean that the king had commanded them to
kill every Calvinist they could lay their hands on, which was
not true. 30
...
[Things
quickly degenerated out of control. Not only were the leaders
of the Calvinists killed, but a mob mentality broke out and even
women and children were killed. At least 2,000 were slain.
However, ]
Some
were saved by the occasional pity that always appears at such
times, proving that charity never disappears altogether from the
bloody human race; some were saved for reasons of state, like Briquemaut, who had once led Calvinists into battle wearing a
necklace of priests' ears, and who found refuge in the English
embassy; and some escaped on fast horses, notably Montgomery the
Scot, the man who had killed Henry II [the
father of Charles IX] in the tournament (because he
[Montgomery] had since become a
French Calvinist leader, some now believed that had not been an
accident after
all), who was pursued all day by the Guises, and in an epic race
finally outdistanced them on a
tireless little mare.
31…
In all
probability we come closest to the real truth about Charles IX
and
what he had done in his confession to his doctor, the famous
Ambroise Paré, about a
week after the massacre in Paris:
Ambroise, I do not know what
has been happening to me for the last two or
three days, but I find my
mind and body greatly disturbed, as if I were fevered. It
seems to me at every moment, whether waking or sleeping, that
those massacred bodies are
presenting themselves before me, with their faces hideous
and covered with blood. I wish they had not included the simple
and the innocent.36
One hard fact emerges clearly from this welter of horror: contrary to
generations of Protestant
historians, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was not
premeditated. The intent of
the king and council was to kill only thirty people, not
two thousand. After the attempted assassination of Coligny there
had been at least serious talk of, and quite possibly a specific
plan for a Calvinist attack on
Paris
and seizure of the royal palace of the Louvre, which seemed to
justify
action
against the leaders. But the total disregard of all forms of law
in the
killings; the
merciless butchery of the helpless, unarmed, undefended Coligny;
and the complete disregard
of the impact of these bloody nocturnal proceedings
upon a volatile and angry
populace, made massacre the inevitable result. Since the
general massacre actually began in the royal palace, Charles IX
could hardly claim ignorance
of it. From dawn until
eleven
o'clock on the fatal morning he
did nothing to stop it, and there
are reports that he encouraged it. When later he tried to pull
back, it was much too late. The responsibility and the guilt
were his. …
An event such as this, whose true story has taken four hundred
years to disentangle, was sure to be wildly misrepresented in
the first news reports of it.
No one really knew what had happened, except that a great many
French Calvinists had been killed by Catholics in Paris.
A shudder of horror and a burst of anger passed over Protestant
Europe. The massacre seemed to prove that the Catholics really
wanted to kill them all.
Catholics, on the other hand, could not
forget that many of these
Calvinists had been entirely willing to kill at least
priests and religious with no
more compunction than the Paris Catholics had
shown in striking- don the
Calvinists in their midst. The massacre of St.
Bartholomew was an event of war, not of peace. For years the
Pope and Philip II of Spain had been urging the French
government to crack down on the Calvinist revolutionaries
[ who were killing defenseless Catholic
priests and nuns without any compunction whatsoever, and ],
to proceed against them with the utmost rigor. It was all too
easy to see what had happened in Paris as the infliction at last
of the much-needed condign punishment, a victory in the great
religious war sweeping Christendom.
But in a civilized state,
condign punishment is the function of law. To have it inflicted
by a mob in the streets is anarchy, not justice.…
The
Guise Cardinal of Lorraine, who was in Rome, rejoiced; Pope Gregory XIII
ordered a Te Deum
said in thanksgiving for the deliverance of the French royal
family and Christendom from Coligny's alleged plot to murder the
king, seize the crown, support the rebels in the Low Countries,
and march on Rome.39
…
[It
would be correct to say that there was to much rejoicing in
Catholic circles at this terrible event. The wartime mentality
took over and swayed people from better judgment. To be fair the
earliest reports did not reveal the atrocities that were
committed against the women and children. The full report of
what happened only gradually became known and accepted. Today,
the Catholic Church certainly does not rejoice in the wickedness
that happened at what happened in France, just as the Catholic
Church does not rejoice in the deliberate nuclear bombings of
civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many Protestants have
wrongly accused Pope Gregory
XIII of approving the deliberate killing of innocent women and
children. However, the Pope did not approve of that.]
However, the Pope was
horrified by the cruelties of the massacre, shedding
tears and saying: “I am
weeping for the conduct of the king [Charles IX], which
is unlawful and forbidden by
God.” Spanish ambassador Zuniga described him
as "struck with horror" at
the details of the massacre. Later the Pope said he
wept for the many innocent dead, and refused to receive the assassin
Maurevert in audience.
The ambassador of
Savoy wrote from Rome that what had happened in Paris
“has been extolled insofar as it affects the good of the king
and of his kingdom and of religion, but it would have been far
more highly extolled if His Majesty had been able to act with
clean hands.” On September 11 the Pope celebrated the event in a
special bull, though it was worded to praise only the execution
of the leaders, not the slaughter of the two thousand. ...
40
For the Footnotes, 20-40, that document the
facts above see:
The Cleaving Of Christendom
A History Of Christendom, Vol. 4,
by Warren H. Carroll, Ph. D.
Warren H. Carroll, Ph. D.,
Anne's husband, has written a multiple volume history of the
Church. It is more of a college level text.
See The Cleaving Of Christendom -A History Of Christendom, Vol. 4,
by Warren H. Carroll, Ph. D.
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