LEAGUC 99 LEAGUC
monarohical state are matters of grave consequence, because immediately after the assassination of Henry
and that it is impossible for subjects to band them- III the Senate had decided to send an ambassador to
selves together without preiudicmg the royal supe- Henry of Bourbon, the pope sent him back to his post,
riority ". The nobility had lacked unanimity, and the expressing a hope that the Venetians might be able to
cities had been too lukewarm to maintain this first persuade Menry of Bourbon to be reconciled with the
league. Holy See. On 14 May, 1590, the papal legate Caetani
fl. The League of 1585. — ^The death of the Duke blessed, saluting them as Machabees^ the 1300 monks of Anlou (10 June, 1584) having made Henry of Bour- who, led by Rose, Bishop of Senlis, and Pelletier, bon, the Protestant King of Navarre, heir presumptive Cur^ of Saint-Jacques, organiz^ for the defence of to Henry III, a new league was formecf amone the Paris against Henry of Bourbon; but, on the other aristocracy and the people. On the one hano, the hand, the pope manifested great displeasure because Dukes of Guise, Mayenne, and Nevers and Baron de the Sorbonne had declared, on 7 May, that, even "ab- Senecey met at Nancv to renew the League, with the solved of his crimes*', Henry of Bourbon could not be- object of securing the recognition, as heir to the come King of France. The Leaguers in their enthu- throne, of the Cardinal de Bourbon, who would extir- siasm had denied to the papal authority the richt of mtte heresy and receive the Council of Trent in France, eventually admitting Henry of Bourbon to the Uirone Fhilip II, by the Treaty of Joinville (31 December, of France. They found new cause for indignation in 1584), promised his concurrence, in the shape of a the fact that Sixtus V had received the Duke of Lux- monthly subsidy of 50,000 crowns. At Paris, on the embourg-Piney, the envoy of Henry's party; and other hand, Charles Hotteman, Sieur de Rochcblond, Philip II, while in Paris, caused a sermon to be "moved by the Spirit of God", Provost, cur4 of Saint preached against the pope.
S6verin, Boucher, cur6 of Saint Benott, and Launoy, a But when, after the brief pontificate of Urban VII,
canon of Soissons, appealed to the middle classes of the Gregory XIV became pope (5 December, 1590) the
cities to save Catnolicism. A secret society was League and Spain recovered their influence at Rome,
formed. Rocheblond and five other leaguers carried Several Briefs dated in March, 1591, and two "moni-
on a propaganda, gradually organizing a Rttlc armyat toria " to the nuncio Landriano once more proclaimed
Paris, and establishing relations with the Guises. The the downfall of Henry of Bourbon. The prelates who
combination of these two movements — the aristo- sided with Henry, assembled at Chartres, in Septem-
cratic and the popular — ^resulted in the manifesto of ber, 1591, protested against the "monitoria" and ap-
30 March, 1585, launched from P^ronne by Guise and pealed from them to the pope's maturer information,
the princes amounting to a sort of declaration of war The gradual development oi a third party weakened
against Henry III. The whole story of the League the League and hastened the approach of an under-
has been told in the article Guise. We shall here standing between Rome -and Henry of Bourbon (see
dwell upon only the following two points. Henry I V) . Briefly, the Holy See felt a natural sym-
A. Relations between the Fopes and the League, — pathy for the Catholic convictions in which the League
Gregory XIII approved of the Lea^e after 1584, but originated; but, to the honour of Sixtus V, he would
abstained from committing himself to any writing in not, in the most tragic moments of his pontificate,
its favour. Sixtus V wished the struggle against compromise himself too far with a movement which
heresy in France to be led by the king nimseff; the floufei the authority of Henry III, the legitimate
religious zeal of the Leaguers pleased him, but he did king; neither would he admit the maxim: "Culpam
notlike the movement of political independence in re- non pocnam aufert absolutio peccati^' (Absolution
lation to Henry III. Events, however, drove Sixtus blots out the sin, but not its penalty), in virtue of
V to take sides with the Leaguers. The Bull of 9 Sep- which certain theologians of the League claimed that
tember, 1585, by which he declared Henry of Bourbon Henry IV, even if absolved by the pope, would still be
and the Prince of Cond6 as Protestants, to have for- incapable of succeeding to the French throne. By
feited the succession, provoked so much opposition this wise policy, Sixtus prepared the way far in ad.-
from the Parliament, and so spirited a reply from vance for the reconciliation which he hoped for, and
Henry, that the League, in its turn, recognized the which was to be realized in the absolution of Henry IV
necessity of a counterstroke. Louis d 'Orleans, an ad- by Clement VIII.
Yocate and a leaguer, imdertook the defence of the B. Political Doctrines of the League, — Charles La- Bull in the " Avertissement des Catholiques Anglais bitto has found it possible to write a book on "La aux Frangais Catholiques'S an extremely violent D^ocratiesouslaLigue'\ The religious rising of the manifesto against Henry of Bourbon. Madame de people soon took shelter behind certain political Montpensier, a sister of the Guises, boasted that she theories which tended to the revival of medieval po- ruled the famous preachers of the League, the " Satire htical liberties and the limitation of royal absolutism. M^nipp^ presently turned them to ridicule, while In 1586 the advocate Le Breton, in a pamphlet for in their turn the Leaguers from the pulpits of Paris, which he was hanged, called Henry III "one of the attacked not only Henry of Bourbon, but the acts, greatesthvpocrites who ever lived", demanded an as- the morals, and the orthodoxy of Henry HI. Such sembly of the States General from which the royal / preachers were Rose, Bishop of Senlis, Boucher and officers should )ye excluded, and proposed to restore Ft^vost, the aforesaid cur^, — ^the latter of whom all their franchises to the cities. Ideas of political caused an immense picture to be displayed, represent- autonomy were beginning to take definite shape. The ing the horrible sufferings inflicted upon Catholics League wished the clergy to recover those liberties by the English co-religionists of Henry of Bourbon, which it possessed before the Concordat of Francis I, Other preachers were de Launay, a canon of Soissons, the nobility to regain the independence it enjoyed in the learned Benedictine G^n^brard, the controver- the Middle Ages, and the cities to be restored to a cer- Bialist Feuardent, the ascetic writer Pierre Crespet, and tain degree of autonomy. After the assassination of Guincestre, cur6 of Saint-Gervais, who, preaching at Guise, a crime instigated by Henry III, sixty-six Saint-Barth^lemy on New Year's Day, 1589, made fdl doctors of the Sorbonne declared that the king's sub- irtio heard him take an oath to spend the last penny jects were freed from their oath of allegiance and they had and shed their last drop of blood to avenge might lawfully take arms, collect money, and defend the assassination of Guise. By these excesses of the the Roman religion against the king; the name of Leaguers asginst the monarchical principle, and by the Henry III was erased from the Canon of the Mass and murder of Henry III by Jacques Clement (1 August, replaced by the "Catholic princes". Boucher, cur^ 1589), Sixtus V was compelled to assume an attitude of Saint-Benolt, popularized this opinion of the Sor- oC extreme reserve towanis the League. Tibe nuncio bonne in his book * De justa Henrici Tertii abdica- Matteuxzi having thought it his duty to leave Venice tione", in which he maintained that Henry lU, *'aa A
