SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S
337
SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S
cordingly she reminded him of the revenge that she
had predicted, and neither in December, 1571, nor in
August, 1572, was Salviati verj' expHcit in his corre-
spondence with the Court of Rome as, on 8 Sep-
tember, 1572, three weeks after the massacre. Car-
dinal Como, Secretary of State to Gregory XIII,
wrote to Salviati: "Your letters show that you were
aware of the preparations for the blow against the
Huguenots long before it was dealt. You would
have done well to inform His Holiness in time." In
fact on 5 August, Salviati had written to Rome: "The
Queen will rap the Admiral's knuckles if he goes too
far" {donnera a U Admiral sur les ongles), and on 11
August: "Finally, I hope that God will give me the
grace soon to announce to you something that will fill
His Holiness with joy and satisfaction." This was
all. A subsequent letter from Salviati revealed that
this covert allusion was to the scheme of vengeance
that Catherine was then projecting in regard to Co-
ligny's assassination and that of a few Protestant
leaders: however, it seems that at the Court of Rome
the reference was supposed to be to a re-establi.sh-
ment of cordial relations between France and Spain.
The replies of the Cardinal of Como to Salviati show
that this last idea was what absorbed the attention of
Gregory' XIII and that the Court of Rome gave but
little heed to Catherine's threats against the Protes-
tants. Notwithstanding that Salviati was Cathe-
rine's relative and that he was maintaining a close
watch, all documents prove, as Soldan, the German
Protestant historian, says, that the events of 24 Au-
gust were accomplished independently of Roman in-
fluence. Indeed, so little did Salviati foresee the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew itself that he wrote to
Rome the day after the event: "I cannot believe that
so many would have perished if the Admiral had died
of the musket-shot fired at him. ... I cannot be-
lieve a tenth of what I now see before my ver>' eyes."
D. The attitude of Gregory XIII on receiving the news
of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. — It was on 2 Sep-
tember that the first rumours of what had occurred in
France reached Rome. Danes, secretary- to Mande-
lot. Governor of Lyons, bade AI. de Jou, Commander
at Saint-Antoine, to inform the pope that the chief
Protestant leaders had been killed in Paris, and that
the king had ordered the governors of the provinces to
seize all Huguenots. Cardinal de Lorraine, when thus
informed, gave the courier 200 ecus and Gregory' XIII
gave him 1000. The pope wanted bonfires lighted in
Rome, but Ferals, the French Ambassador, objected
on the ground that official communication should first
be received from the king and the nuncio. On 5 Sep-
tember Beauvillier reached Rome, having been sent
thither by Charles IX. He gave an account of the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew and begged Gregory
XIII to grant, antedating it, the dispensation re-
quired for the legitimacy of the marriage of Margaret
of Valois and Henry of Navarre, solemnized three
weeks previously. Gregory XIII deferred discu.ssing
the subject of the dispensation and a letter from the
Cardinal de Bourbon dated 26 August and a despatch
from Salviati, both received at this time, duly in-
formed him of what had taken place in France.
"Said Admiral," wTote the Cardinal de Bourbon,
"was so wicked as to have conspired to kill said King,
his mother, the Queen and his brothers. ... He (the
Admiral) and all the ringleaders of his sect were
slain. . . . And what I most commend is the resolu-
tion taken by His Majesty to exterminate this ver-
min." In his letter describing the massacre Salviati
said: "I rejoice that it has pleased the Divine Maj-
esty to take under His protection the King and tlie
Queen-mother." Thus all the information received
from France gave Gregory XIII the impression that
Charles IX and his family had been saved from great
danger. The verj- morning of the day that Beau-
villier had brought him Salviati's letter, the pope held
XIII.— 22
a consistorj^ and announced that "God had been
pleased to be merciful". Then with all the cardinals
he repaired to the Church of St. Mark for the Te
Deum, and prayed and ordered prayers that the Most
Christian King might rid and purge his entire king-
dom of the Huguenot plague. He believed that the
Valois had just escaped a most terrible conspiracy
which, had it succeeded, would have unfitted France
for the struggle of Christian against Turk. On 8 Sep-
tember a procession of thanksgiving took place in
Rome, and the pope, in a praj'er after mass, thanked
Gk)d for having "granted the Cathohc people a glori-
ous triumph over a perfidious race " (gloriosam de per-
fidis gentihus populo caiholico Icetitiam tribuisti).
A suddenly discovered plot, an exemplary chastise- ment administered to insure the safety of the royal family, such was the light in which Gregory XIII viewed the St. Bartholomew massacre, and such was likewise the idea entertained by the Spanish Ambas- sador who was there with him and who, on 8 Sep- tember, WTote as follows: "I am certain that if the musket-shot fired at the Admiral was a matter of several days' premeditation and was authorized by the King, what followed was inspired by circum- stances." These circumstances were the threats of the Huguenots, "the insolent taunts of the whole Huguenot party", alluded to by Salviati in his despatch of 2 September; to put it briefly, these circumstances constituted the conspiracy. However, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who belonged to the House of Guise and resided in Rome, wished to insinuate that the massacre had been planned long ahead by his family, and had a solemn inscription placed over the entrance to the Church of St. Louis des Frangais, pro- claiming that the success achieved was an answer "to the prayers, supphcations, sighs and meditation of twelve years"; this hypothesis, according to which the massacre was the result of prolonged hypocri.sy, the outcome of a protracted ruse, was shortly after- wards maintained with great audacity in a book by Capilupi, Catherine's Italian panegyri-st. But the Spanish Ambassador refuted this interpretation: "The French," wrote he, "would have it understood that their King meditated this stroke from the time that he concluded the peace with the Huguenots, and they attribute to him trickery that does not seem permissible even against heretics and rebels." And the ambassador was indignant at the Cardinal of Lorraine's folly in giving the Guises credit for having set a trap. The pope did not believe any more than did the Spanish Ambassador in a snare laid by Cath- ohcs, but was rather convinced that the conspiracy had been hatched by Protestants.
Just as the Turks had succumbed at Lepanto, the Protestants had succumbed in France. Gregory XIII ordered a jubilee in celebration of both events and engaged Vasari to paint side by side in one of the Vatican apartments scenes commemorative of the victory of Lepanto and of the triumph of the Most Christian King over the Huguenots. Finally, he had a medal struck representing an exterminating angel sniiting the Huguenots with his sword, the inscrip- tion reading: Hugonottorum strages. There had been a slaughter of conspirators (strages) and the informa- tion that reached the pope was identical with that spread throughout Europe by Charles IX. On 21 September Charles IX wrote to Elizabeth of England concerning the "imminent danger" from the plot that he had baffled; on the next day he wrote as follows to La Mothe-Fenelon, his amba.ssador at London: "Cohgny and his followers were all ready to visit upon us the same fate that we dealt out to them"; and to the German princes he sent similar information. Certainlj' all this seemed justified by the decree of the French magistracy ordering the admiral to be burned in effig\' and prayers and pro- cessions of thanksgiving on each recurring 24 August,
