The Irish standard., 1895-01-19
ELIGIOUS WARS.

ELIGIOUS WARS.
Continued from First Page. sE
and as many as Eve hundred churches
and fifty cathedrals. In the little king
dom Of Bearn alone no less than three
hundred churches were destroyed By: the
insurgent Huguenots.
Led on by their preachers, the law.
Jess sectaries committed profanations 90
atrocious that nothing else in history ap
proaches them. At Rouen they destroy
ed the sepulchral monuments OF the
Norman Dukes;at Lyons they demolished
the cofin of st. Bonaventure; at Tours
they threw the bones of st. Irrenaeus
and st. Martin into the River Seine; at
Plessis they broke open the coffin Of st.
Francis Of Paula, and on finding the
body incorrupt, dragged it through the
streets and threw it into the fire, and
they pulled down the statue Of Joan of
Arc, the 'Maid Of Orleans Scarcely g
monument of Christian art escaped their
fury; among the many libraries to which
they set fire was also the famous library
of Cluny, which contained about 5000
precious manuscripts.
{" These acts of vandalism, committed
in the name Of the pure Gospel and for
the overthrow Of ido]atry,' were, as rule
accompanied by bloodshed and murder.
Priests and monks were murdered in
great numbers, frequently by being
thrown from the towers of their church
es. I'm Sully, Coligny ordered thirty.five
priests to be slaughtered; in P.thiviers,
he commanded all the priests to be slain.
At the Council of Trent, the Cardinal OF
Lorraine reported 5000 religeuse to have
been murdered within few months be.
! cause OF their refusal to renounce their
allegiance to the Apostolic See. Brique.
mont, q Huguenot leader, wore neck
lace made of the ears of slain priests. In
the Dauphine alone 256 priests and liz
monks were murdered.
"'The Catholic laity Jared no better
At Orthez, in Bearp, Count Montgomery
caused the slaughter of 5000 Catholics
including women aud children. In the
Dauphine Baron des Arets forced
Catholics to throw themselves down from
precipice On the pixies Of the soldiers
and made his children wash their hands
in @ .tholic blood. In the civil wars
| which they stirred up in France, the
ferocious Huguenots, wherever they
happened to be in power, slaughtered
unarmed Catholics by the thousands
At Nismes, in 1867, the Hugusnots5 car
ried out massacre in which several
hundred Catholics persisted. This u r.
rible slaughter was called the sMiche:
lade, from the fact of it's having occur
red on ST. MichRe]'s Day. @ ..tes SNA''5
/" The atrocities perpetrated by TIT
Hugueno.s sbut too often int1anied The
passions ofstths Catholics and enrageed
them to deeds of fearful retalia tion'
But. here we must remember that the
Catholics, in most instances, acted iii
lf.defense against the Huguenots, who
were the offenders and aggressors, and
whatever cruelties and excuses we're we're
committed by the Catholic party were
done ia obedience to regal authority.
The Church, therefore, cannot be held
responsible for the deeds of cruelty
which she ever condemns. Such is
especially true of the massacre of st.
Bartholomew" in 1872.
|. zone thing ie evident from the above
critical narration, to-wit, that tie Cath
olic Church cannot be inculpated either
directly or indirectly for the massacre OF
st. Bartholomew
Even the best Protestant historians,
who have devoted their talents to the
discussion of this much vexed question,
exculpate the Church of Rome from any
participation in this massacre, as, for
example, Ranke, Baur, Hagenbach, Po-
lenz, Froude, Behold, Cobbett, Baumgar-
ten, etc.
ga final word as to the number re-
ported killed in this massacre. As might
be expected, the historical accuracy OF
fanatical writer's did not keep pace with
their hatred of the Church.
among the Huguenot writer's, Per-
rifx states the number of slain at 100000
Sully at 10000, Thusnus at 10000, La
Poperline at 10000. What wonderful
historical gyrations! What value would
any court of justice put on the above ey-
idence? The martyrologist, DESTROYS To
be more accurately informed, obtained
from the ministers in the different towns
where massacres had taken place the
names of all who had persisted or were
considered to have been killed; he pub
lished the result in 1852, and in the
whole of France he was unable to find
the names Of more than seven hundred